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

[Ben Tilly]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:55 AM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> John, once again you state the obvious to support an invalid argument:
>> By the same token, the GPL is a standard open-source license and the
>> Motosoto Open Source License is not, though both are equally OSI certified.
>
> Do you expect anyone to argue that the GPL isn't the most widely used
> and popular open source license (although its author might quarrel with
> the phrase "open source" much as I do to the word "standard")? I'm also
> comfortable with the suggestion that the Motosoto license is an irrelevancy
> in the software industry. If your FAQ wants to say that, do so.

Suggested solution, can we use the word "common" instead of
"standard"?  And our definition of common should be something
relatively objective, like the top X licenses in use on github, minus
licenses (like the GPL v2) whose authors are pushing to replace with a
different license.

The problem is simple.  Larry has a vested interest because he is the
author of several licenses, and makes money in helping clients find
the license that best meets their needs.

Most other people in this conversation don't particularly care whether
the license best meets the needs of the person writing software - as
software consumers they want to have a small number of licenses to
understand and deal with.  Hence there is a desire to call some of
them "standard licenses".  But when you throw the word "standard" out
there, you give the implicit notion that there is a "standard" by
which things were judged.  And standards processes are always going to
be very, very political because, by definition, they are attempting to
select approved winners and the disapproved losers will always try
(generally loudly) to influence the selection process.

However we have no standards process, no standards body, and shouldn't
be triggering that reaction lightly.

But it seems to me that "common" pushes developers in a desirable
direction, but does so subtly enough to leave Larry room for what he
does, and without triggering the "OMG, we're not following a
standard!" reaction where it is not warranted.