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

[Joshua R. Simmons]

Thanks all for this discussion, I really appreciate how folks are engaging.
It's edifying.

I think we all know, at this point, that OSI is extremely limited in terms
of organizational capacity. Our staff and board need to be laser focused
with the use of our time in order to keep our programs humming along and
address limiting factors so that we can do more in the future. As such, I
don't think we can expect OSI to spend much of its staff time and monetary
resources on something that is, ultimately, experimental and quite possibly
outside the scope of its remit.

However, there is a way that OSI can play a role in continuing to move the
discussion forward, beyond just hosting these conversations on L-D: Incubator
Projects and Working Groups
<https://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Main/Open+Source+Initiative+Working+Groups/>.
We've hosted working groups on all manner of subjects of interest to the
broader open source community, including "Beyond Licensing," "FLOSS
Entities," "Public Policy," and "Standards."

These are formal, time-boxed* vehicles that community members are invited
to fire up, with board approval. These vehicles get the benefit of our
infrastructure and regular reports to the board.

With an eye on seeing something actionable come out of all this, or at
least seeing some of the stickier questions thoroughly explored and
documented, and recognizing that some would like to see OSI play a leading
role, I'd like to invite folks to put together a proposal
<https://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Main/Open+Source+Initiative+Working+Groups/Working+Group+Initial+Proposal+Template/>
.

This message is by no means meant to chill or slow this discussion.
Discussion here is valid and valuable. I just want to highlight what might
be a meaningful next step.

Thanks,
Josh

Josh Simmons (he/him), VP at Open Source Initiative (Tax ID 91-2037395)
@joshsimmons <http://twitter.com/joshsimmons> | josh at opensource.org |
1-707-600-6098
| bluesomewhere on Freenode
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