[License-discuss] Thoughts on the subject of ethical licenses

[Josh Berkus]

On 3/11/20 2:33 PM, Gil Yehuda via License-discuss wrote:
> This topic is very important and we're all passionate about it. Written
> text in email groups is notoriously bad for conveying nuance. I was
> hoping to come across more balanced than perhaps I did. My essential
> message is that as a discussion list we're most effective toward our
> goals when we focus on improving /open source/ licensing.

Sure, but what "improving" means has to be continually defined, and tested.

Coraline (and others) believe that ethical clauses are a license
improvement.  I happen to not agree, but that doesn't mean they're
arguing in bad faith, or even necessarily wrong.  If you don't think
Coraline sincerely believes in her mission to improve open source, you
haven't met her.

And ... we just this month decided that "rights to user data" *was*
potentially an improvement in open source licensing.  Several people
still disagree that this is an improvement (some quite vocally), and
time will tell who is right, but if we couldn't have a discussion that
tests the limits of what is open source, then we couldn't make progress.

License-discuss is where we discuss (among other things) what it means
to be Open Source, up to, and including, revisions of the OSD (OSD 8/9,
I have my eyes on you).  If you want a list where the OSD text is
immutable, then that's license-review.

-- 
Josh Berkus