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

[Tobie Langel]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 5:07 PM Russell McOrmond <russellmcormond at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>

Thank you for sharing these measured thoughts, Russell.

I agree wholeheartedly with the underlying message, which I read as a
strong desire to work together as a community to meaningfully advance
concerns that are increasingly becoming mainstream within the open source
community.

I agree that there's still a lot of disagreement and experimentation among
what exactly "meaningful" means here. I believe that's expected and normal
in such early stages.

I sincerely hope the OSI can rise to the occasion and provide leadership to
move this conversation forward by providing a forum where experimentation
and mistakes are tolerated and aren't shamed. It is critical that
authorities and experts in this field lead through example and kindness
(like I've already seen many do) and not by appeals to authority.
Regardless of whether licenses are the right place for this effort (and I
think there's agreement on both sides of this issue that they might not
be), it is important to allow this experimentation to happen (and its best
if it happens in a controlled way). And it is just as important for experts
to reconsider their positions in light of new propositions or new thinking
from non-experts in the field, even if they end-up making the same
conclusions. This is the only way to create community-wide consensus around
these issues and avoid infighting.

The very real risk, otherwise, is for these experimentations to happen
nonetheless, in a much more chaotic environment, bypassing OSI altogether,
and potentially leading to much more disruptive outcomes.

Also thank you for sharing Scheiner's talk. It's good and insightful, as
usual.

--tobie
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