[License-discuss] What should fit in a FOSS license?

[Russell McOrmond]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 3:34 PM Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org> wrote:

> But I'm talking about going beyond that -- using the Vaccine License to
> explain why we have OSD 5 in the first place, because devs under 40 do
> not believe in the OSD.  It needs to be explained. Stay tuned.
>

I think we have recently seen examples of devs over 40 who don't
understand the reasons behind the OSD, whether from a political/rights
perspective or a more practical software engineering/adoption perspective.
I don't think this is strictly a matter of age.


Understanding the history of the problems Free Software and then later Open
Source were created to try to solve, and the compromises that already
happened, are critical for understanding what types of changes will be
acceptable and what is going to be recognised as in opposition.

It was already a compromise for those of us who were involved in Free
Software movement for human rights/freedoms (freedom from excessive control
by software copyright owners, and later software patent owners when that
harmful concept was invented) reasons were sceptical of the more
politics-neutral "Open Source" language.  There was a need to explain to us
why nothing of the underlying freedom goals was lost in the adoption of the
marketing term "Open Source" to describe essentially the same thing in a
much more business/success friendly manner.  The licenses would be the
same, with the criteria for Open Source being based on the Debian Free
Software Guidelines (DFSG), even if the organisations created to manage the
important brands (FSF and OSI) might be a different stages of approval
processes.



I became a convert -- until recently I became sceptical again as people
started talking about "being a little bit more open" as being a relevant
goal of Open Source.   If Open Source becomes something entirely different
than Free Software, and the rights/freedom public policy goals are lost,
then we'll splinter into those different camps and I believe that success
for anyone will go out the door.

-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable
media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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