[License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on "why standard licenses"?

[Lawrence Rosen]

Simon Phipps wrote:

> Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses 

> for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be

> on the home page).

 

Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization.

 

I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses, but I have long challenged your attempts to steer people toward some subset of those licenses. Especially if you hint that they are in any way, shape or form "standard" licenses.  That's overreach for which you are not legally qualified.

 

/Larry

 

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com/> www.rosenlaw.com) 

3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

Cell: 707-478-8932   Fax: 707-485-1243

 

From: Simon Phipps [mailto:simon at webmink.com] 
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:44 PM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on "why standard licenses"?

 

I don't think that's the point of the entry Luis is constructing. He's using the word "standardized" as a term of speech rather than as a technical term. 

 

Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page).

 

S.

 

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 8:31 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> > wrote:

How about "OSI Approved" license? That's what you do. 



Simon Phipps <webmink at opensource.org <mailto:webmink at opensource.org> > wrote:

Care to propose an improvement?

 

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:37 PM, lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com>  <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> > wrote:

"Standard" is a loaded term. Licenses are not standards and OSI is not a standards organization.  Larry

 


-------- Original message --------
From: Luis Villa 
Date:04/27/2014 6:11 PM (GMT-08:00) 
To: License Discuss 
Subject: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on "why standard licenses"? 

Hi, all-

A few of us were talking and realized the FAQ/website have nothing to explain why *using standard licenses* is a good idea. This being a sort of basic point, I started remedying the problem :) 

Draft FAQ entry addressing the question is here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/Why+standardized+licensing%3F

There is also an incomplete potential more-than-FAQ answer that could be put somewhere on opensource.org <http://opensource.org> . The more I think about it, the more I think the FAQ may be sufficient, but I'd be curious what others here think and whether something longer is worthwhile.

Feedback is probably better on-wiki but the list is fine too. :)

Luis

 

 

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