[License-discuss] Evolving the License Review process for OSI

Sun Jun 2 15:59:44 UTC 2019

Richard Fontana wrote:
> Larry Rosen, of all people, used the term "software freedom" in the
subtitle of his influential early 2000s book on open source licensing, not
long after the period of his own involvement in the OSI and prior to the
founding of SFLC.

Richard, thank you for the reminder. But then Larry Rosen, of all people,
spent all of Chapter 1 defining (and redefining) that "software freedom"
term as "open source principles." I'm not guilty of leaving complex terms
ill-defined.

/Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf
Of Richard Fontana
Sent: Saturday, June 1, 2019 10:52 P
To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
Cc: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at lists.opensource.org>
Subject: Re: [License-review] [License-discuss] Evolving the License Review
process for OSI

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 7:47 PM Luis Villa < <mailto:luis at lu.is> luis at lu.is>
wrote:

> From the updated  <https://opensource.org/approval>
https://opensource.org/approval:

> "the OSI determines that the license ... guarantees software freedom."

> 

> I still have seen no coherent explanation of what software freedom means
in the OSI context. Richard has asserted on Twitter that it isn't
necessarily the same thing as FSF's definition, but OSI has not (as best as
I can tell) proposed an alternative either, so we're left with a limbo of
having some idea what FSF means, but knowing that OSI's definition is
somehow, in unknown directions, different.

Tangent: I was surprised that you apparently assumed at first that the
invocation of "software freedom" was an attempt to reference FSF authority,
as though the FSF has some sort of intellectual monopoly on the concept. I
don't primarily associate the term "software freedom"

with the FSF.  It was not popularized by the FSF, "free software" was.

Yes, "software freedom" is in a sense derivative of "free software", but the
difference in the terms is historically significant. Contrary to what I had
thought, and as you and Pam pointed out, the FSF has itself used the term
"software freedom" on its website for several years now, but I think they
may have picked the usage up from outside, possibly only after the founding
of SFLC, and in any case I think their public use of the term is fairly
limited. Larry Rosen, of all people, used the term "software freedom" in the
subtitle of his influential early 2000s book on open source licensing, not
long after the period of his own involvement in the OSI and prior to the
founding of SFLC. Bradley Kuhn was the early champion of the term [1],
beginning during his tenure as FSF executive director, but I believe he
personally preferred the term over "free software" and I understand that RMS
never really took to the term "software freedom" himself. I assume that the
use of the term in SFLC's name is ultimately due to Bradley's influence. In
more recent times, but well before this change to the approval process,
"software freedom" rhetoric has been especially emphasized publicly by
people associated with the OSI, most notably Simon Phipps but I think also
some past board directors such as Allison Randal and Stefano Zacchiroli. It
seems to me "software freedom" is now as much an OSI term as it is an FSF
term, if not more so.

And as for "free software", which admittedly the term "software freedom" is
intended to evoke, RMS may have coined this term and the FSF may have done
more than anyone else to popularize it, with limited success I suppose, but
Debian adopted a non-FSF-endorsed set of "free software" guidelines (with
conclusions about certain licenses departing from the FSF's, as for example
with respect to the Artistic License 1.0 and the GFDL) which of course were
essentially rebranded with some modifications as the OSD. So "free software"
-- free in the FSF sense -- has not been an FSF monopoly concept in FLOSS
since 1997 if not earlier.

I may respond more substantively to your comments in a separate response.

[1] I recall that Bradley preferred to change the prefatory sentence in the
stock GNU license notice ("This program is free software") to "This software
gives you freedom".

Richard

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