[License-discuss] Proposed license decision process

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Nicholas Matthew Neft Weinstock (nweinsto at qti.qualcomm.com):

> The possibility of unintentionally including licenses as "Open Source"
> that the community does not view as providing proper software freedom
> is mostly philosophical.  But the possibility of licenses no longer
> being "Open Source" could have real-world implications for projects
> that already use these licenses, as well as the folks who use those
> projects.  

I would suggest that there is very little real-world acceptance of very
peculiar and obscure licences merely on grounds that they became OSI
Certified through laxity and inattention, long ago.  In particular, 
I think open source coders in general have become fairly skeptical of 
such things when considering what projects to sink time and effort into.

This is something authors of vanity and crayon licences inevitably don't
'get', but I maintain has been generally true for some decades.  There's 
a prevalent (and IMO healthy) attitude that, if a project isn't under
one of the major licences, at bare minimum this requires a compelling
explanation about why.

That's not to say that OSI Certified licences that really shouldn't have
been approved aren't a lingering problem, but I'd call it a small one.

-- 
Cheers,                "I never quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel."
Rick Moen                    -- Rep. Charles B. Brownson (R-Indiana), ca. 1960
rick at linuxmafia.com
McQ! (4x80)