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

[Lawrence Rosen]

Miles and others,

Can you correlate what OSI does with what is described at http://opensource.org/osr-intro? 

I should also point out that criteria for open standards have been argued about extensively in the standards community. They are by no means widely accepted. I'm not suggesting that open standards (whatever that term means) aren't essential, but that OSI has a long way to go before it will be respected as a standards organization like the ones you mentioned ("IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C, and so forth"). 

I'm not sure I'd use your term "show-stopper" to describe this. I suppose anyone can "voluntarily" hang out a shingle calling himself a standards organization. But this isn't a time for amateur definitions of "standards" that won't be respected among standards professionals. That doesn't help anyone.

What's worse, it doesn't help anyone choose an *appropriate* license for software.

/Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: Miles Fidelman [mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net] 
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 8:40 AM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on "why standard licenses"?

Lawrence Rosen wrote:
>
> 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.
>

Can you elaborate on that please?  OSI appears to be at least partially acting as a standard formation organization (particularly vis-a-vis the "Open Source Definition").  In your opinion, what precludes it from acting as a voluntary standards organization in a manner similar to IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C, and so forth.  Arguably, its governance is a mess - for example bylaws that state it's not a membership organization, while at the same time soliciting members - but is that a show-stopper?

Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra

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