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

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Russell Nelson wrote:
> On 3/18/20 10:27 AM, Tobie Langel wrote:
>       If the goal is to deter the conversation from happening here, it’s
>       quite effective. If it’s not, please be aware that this is what if
>       feels like to those that are on the receiving end of this.
> 
> Yes! The goal is to deter the conversation, because there is no common 
> ground between Ethical Software (If I don't like you, you can't use my 
> software) and Open Source (even if I don't like you, you can use my 
> software). There is nothing to discuss. Why is that not obvious to 
> everyone? Please, go away, and promote Ethical Software on its own 
> merits.

I object to this, and want to make sure no one confuses Russ (even granted 
his long presence here) for being the last word or authoritative on this.

The two candidates for the OSI board who have raised this as a topic, 
Caroline and Tobie, are long time contributors to and leaders in various 
open source projects and communities. They are not invaders from a foreign 
land nor are they interlopers hoping to free ride off of the positive 
reputation of the Open Source trademark.

That is more than can be said for many of the companies who participated 
in the "open core" discussions ten years ago, who regardless we engaged in 
good faith. Even though those folks went and did their own license, I feel 
it was that constructive engagement that helped win the public argument 
for our side, and sharpened our own community's implicit understanding 
that multi-vendor open source communities are the most resilient form.

Any long term community or institution unwilling to occasionally 
reconsider any of its core principles is one doomed to eventual 
irrelevance. The U.S. Constitution has been successfully amended 27 times, 
with the first ten of them (the Bill of Rights) happening only 2 years 
after, the most recent one ratified in 1992 (203 years after first being 
proposed! now that must have been an epic thread.)

License-discuss is clearly not the appropriate venue for discussion of 
amending the OSD. But if a good faith effort arises to review a license 
that is both OSD-conformant (even if repellant to many) and conformant 
with someone else's definition of "ethical", they are due consideration.

I think there are big issues with every work product I've seen from the 
Ethical Source efforts, and agree with Gil's concerns about their 
approach. But I object to the notion that discussions here are off-limits 
merely because a substantial part of the community may be turned off from 
them. That was never a criteria for consideration of the AGPL or other 
licenses for which mass adoption by the old guard was never a priority.

Brian