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

Tzeng, Nigel H. Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu
Mon May 27 18:39:03 UTC 2019


1. Pointing out that NOSA was held up for 3 years by Richard is not “attacking the messenger” but a criticism of his actions as moderator.  Neither Richard nor Bruce are beyond reproach and I hope that the criticisms have been (mostly) polite.

Bringing up their positions of authority is another sort of fallacy though.

2. I am unaffiliated with NOSA except as a user of and contributor to NOSA licensed software.

I have stated this many many times over the years that I have been on this list.

And as an individual member of the OSI I am allowed to disagree with the assessment of Richard and Bruce on L-R without this disagreement being described as “attacking the messenger”.

3. My agenda is mostly limited to wishing that we have more GOSS.

If government lawyers believe they have a requirement for X and without X they won’t recommend open sourcing then providing them a license that provides X results in more open source code.  This is a good thing as long as X minimally meets the OSD.

Reducing the friction from when someone has the desire to open source to finally having approval for releasing the code to GitHub is a good thing.

Make the process harder and more time consuming and less code makes it through the process.  This is a bad thing.

What other agenda are you insinuating that I have?

4. I have no assumption that many developers are not pro-copyleft.  It is annoying that you would try to put words in my mouth.  I stated that I prefer permissive licenses as these provide more freedom for developers to reuse code.

Henrik, this is the kind of behavior that makes folks leave the list.  I am not your enemy nor am I the enemy of Richard or Bruce.  I have stated before and will again that I hold them in the highest regard.

But I don’t put them on any pedestal either.

ObDis speaking for myself...
From: Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi<mailto:henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi>>
Date: Monday, May 27, 2019, 9:52 AM
To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at lists.opensource.org<mailto:license-review at lists.opensource.org>>
Cc: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at lists.opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] Evolving the License Review process for OSI

On Sun, May 26, 2019 at 9:31 PM Tzeng, Nigel H. <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu> wrote:
>
> I hope and believe that i have not engaged in any ad-hom attacks.  If I have then I apologize.
>
> That said, I don’t believe that stating my perception that you two dominate the list is ad-hom.
>

Considering that one has been acting as the board appointed license
review chair, and the other is the founder of the organization and
author of the OSD, your comments certainly come across as attacking
the messenger. In any case, the have not helped advance your agenda
with the rest of us.

More generally, the amount of list activity from Richard and Bruce
seems to correlate with the amount of hours they spend reviewing, for
free, details of the submitted licenses, historical precedent, and
wider community implications and connections. Their influence is
proportional to the work they contribute. This is how the open source
community works elsewhere too.

> My issue and frustration has been the lack of acceptance that GOSS has its own needs and that special purpose licenses are a category where these needs can be safely met without necessarily setting precedence for other open source domains.
>

You are associated with the NASA license, right? Also in that case the
very specific reasons the license is not acceptable have been clearly
explained to you, and claiming that the problem is a lack of
understanding or appreciation of your government doesn't correctly
summarize those reasons.

> The call for de-listing existing licenses also makes me very uncomfortable as most likely the special purpose licenses are the ones that will get targeted.
>

That's not what that discussion is about. But your concern is
certainly justified, I think we all share it. The topic as a whole is
troublesome.


> It is true that I am much more pro-developer vs pro-user in as much as I lean toward permissive licenses providing more developer freedom and less interested in further extending the bounds of copyleft which curtails developer freedom.
>

Your assumption that vast hordes of developers aren't strongly
pro-copyleft is also mistaken.

henrik
--
henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
+358-40-5697354        skype: henrik.ingo            irc: hingo
www.openlife.cc<http://www.openlife.cc>

My LinkedIn profile: http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/henrik-ingo/3/232/8a7

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