[License-discuss] How can we as a community help empower authors outside license agreements?

[Russell McOrmond]

An earlier question was, "What should fit in a FOSS license?"

I believe that the creation of the "Ethical Source" group, and the level of
support those candidates had during the board election, should be treated
as a wake-up call.  We should have a very good community respond to
concerns that do not fit within FOSS licenses, or even fit legitimately
within any software copyright/patent license agreement.

I'd like a #include a short talk by Bruce Schneier so I don't have to type
that part in :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2jn4pXDZn0

We see with the discussions in this forum a desire that software authors
have to express their public policy views.  I strongly believe that
software license agreements are an entirely counterproductive place to put
these policy views, and thus the more that I agree with their policy views
the more I will appear to be an opponent of their desire to express it in a
software license agreement.

Since the Open Source movement is being asked about this, what will our
answer be?

One answer is to point to other organizations that are doing public
interest technology work.   I'm not happy with this response for reasons
Bruce discusses: these public interest technology groups are both
exceptional as well as being the exception.

Should instead we decide to agree that there be a public interest
technology policy aspect to what OSI does as well.   I don't mean what the
OSI already does, which is explain to policy makers how OSD licensing works
and the policy benefits, but to help ensure that we can harness well the
interest in public policy for authors who come to the OSI looking to
express this.

Just because software license agreements aren't an appropriate avenue to
express a specific public policy concern doesn't mean that the OSI isn't an
appropriate organization to work with for people wishing to do that type of
policy work.

-- 
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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