[License-discuss] license committee

[Karl Fogel]

"Smith, McCoy" <mccoy.smith at intel.com> writes:
>FWIW, the report from the committee (which formed in ’04 but didn’t
>issue a report until ’06) was published here: 
>http://www.opensource.org/proliferation
>
>AFAIK, that report didn’t result in a significant amount of voluntary
>deprecation of licenses (at the time, there were only 4 OSI-approved
>licenses that had been deprecated;  I don’t think many others have
>since).  
>
>I also don’t know if that report had some influence on stemming the
>tide of new licenses submitted for OSI-approval, but it seems as
>though fewer have been added to the list since 2006.  Those who have
>kept closer tabs on the pace of license submission (or voluntary
>deprecations) might be able to shed more light on both of those
>issues.
>
>I’m pretty sure there was some degree of dissatisfaction with the
>output of the ’04 committee and I thought there was going to be a new
>committee set up to reconsider the output, but perhaps that never
>happened.
>
>Sorry for the top-posting for those of you who find that confusing.

No, that was really helpful -- thank you!

(And I'm no reflexive objector to top-posting, FWIW; sometimes it's
appropriate, as here.)

-K

>From: license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org
>[mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Bruce
>Perens
>Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 9:06 AM
>To: license-discuss at opensource.org
>Subject: [License-discuss] license committee
>
> 
>
>If I'm not mistaken, this committee met in 2004? "Time to do it right"
>would be about doing it over. Did I miss some announcement?
>
>On 03/09/2012 08:55 AM, John Cowan wrote: 
>
>Karl Fogel scripsit:
>
> 
>
>    
>        If you want an organization that recommends licenses, the FSF is happy
>
>        
>        to help. I agree that OSI should have a short-list of recommended
>
>        
>        licenses, but the politics of dis-recommending some organization's
>
>        
>        license are too much for them.
>
>        
>         
>
>    This isn't actually the case, by the way.  It's not the politics; it's
>
>    
>    more the time it takes to do it right.
>
>    
> 
>
>I sat on the committee that came up with OSI's current classifications.
>
>Its original remit was to evaluate licenses into best/okay/bad, but no
>
>one except me was willing to actually say that a license was bad or that
>
>people shouldn't use it, so we wound up with the existing, basically
>
>fact-based classification scheme.  And we took plenty of time just to
>
>get to that, so it wasn't a matter of time.
>
> 
>
>I believe I was the only non-lawyer on that committee, except for ESR
>
>who wasn't able to attend most of the meetings.
>
> 
>
> 
>
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