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

[Bruno F. Souza]

Sidestepping the whole discussion around standard's bodies and other meanings of "standard", when I read Luis' FAQ entry, the use of the term "standard" is really confusing...

Specially since the Wiki page does not seem to imply any of the things being discussed in this thread...

The entry seems to equate "standard" with "OSI-approved": 
	"Using standard, OSI-approved open source licenses"
	"standard licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition"
	"standard licenses that have been approved by the Open Source Initiative"
	"Using standard, widely-used terms that comply with the Open Source Definition"

It has nothing to do with popularity or license proliferation, because "standard" is not used in this way in the text. More specifically:
	"Using standard licenses [...] particularly those licenses that are widely-used"
	(for me this clearly states that all approved licenses are "standard", not only the widely-used ones)

It also opposes "standard" with "custom" or "new":
	"reducing [...] legal errors that can be present in new, "custom" licenses."

And some times, it seems to be one thing more then OSI-approved:
	"using a well-known license that is standard in the community *and* [OSI-]approved"
	(emphasis added)

So, I think the text is really calling for a less confusing term, and I think "OSI-approved" is probably what we want here. After all, talking about the advantages of the OSI-approved licenses for projects, developers and managers is a great way to promote OSI.

Cheers,
Bruno.



On 28/04/2014, at 13:04, Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 11:42:51 -0400
> Ben Cotton <bcotton at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Lawrence Rosen
>> <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>>> I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use
>>> approved licenses
>> 
>> Larry hit on my suggestion. Anywhere the word "standard" is used, some
>> variant of "approved" or "OSI-approved" is a reasonable replacement.
> 
> I might be confused but when Luis speaks of "standard" licenses I
> assumed he means a proper subset of the OSI-approved licenses,
> perhaps approximately the set of licenses the OSI has labeled
> "popular" (something I'm known to have criticized in the past), and I
> took Larry's initial response to be based on the same interpretation.
> 
> To characterize all of the OSI-approved licenses as being "standard" in
> a common-sense sense would really stretch the common-sense meaning of
> "standard". For an arbitrary example I picked in going down the list of
> OSI-approved licenses, to assert that there is something "standard"
> about the Attribution Assurance License would be bizarre; I trust no
> one would disagree with that. It's a *nonstandard* license. The fact
> that it was approved by the OSI is very important but it does not
> transform the Attribution Assurance License into something that is
> "standard" in a common-sense sense.
> 
> As to whether it is appropriate to liken OSI to a standards group, that
> seems to be an orthogonal issue -- it's a different use of the word
> "standard" from the use I believe Luis is employing.
> 
> 
> - Richard
> 
> _______________________________________________
> License-discuss mailing list
> License-discuss at opensource.org
> http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Bruno.
______________________________________________________________________
Bruno Peres Ferreira de Souza                         Brazil's JavaMan
http://www.javaman.com.br                      bruno at javaman.com.br
        if I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe