[License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly reorganize the OSI licensing pages

[Mike Milinkovich]

Larry,

 

I think that there is a broad consensus that a new attempt at license
categorization should be undertaken. However, I think it is fair to say that
everyone believes that such a  process will take a significant amount of
time to initiate, and run to completion. And we all need to recognize that
any new process has no more chance of achieving unanimity than the previous
attempts.

 

In the meantime, the proposal here is to make a very modest clean-up of the
licensing landing page to help OSS adopters. We are not reinventing
anything, or taking any new positions as an organization. We are simply
leveraging the work that was done previously. I acknowledge that the
previous effort had its own set of controversies, but it has been the
position of the OSI for several years now that these are the classifications
we have.

 

I certainly sympathize with all those who feel strongly about their licenses
of choice. But being prevented from editing our licensing landing page for
another year or two does not sound very enticing either.

 

 

Now I'll say it publicly: I formally object to any attempt by OSI to pretend
that the current list of "recommended licenses" has any value or validity,
and I request that you NOT patch it by putting useless explanations around
it. Please start a meaningful community process to develop license selection
guidelines and explanations of the differences among licenses, and leave the
politics and biases on the cutting room floor. 

 

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