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

[John Cowan]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 8:53 AM Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:

> So is the OSI brand is worthless?
>
Let's not jump to Conclusions here; it's a long swim back to the mainland
Kingdom of Wisdom.

Of course a certification is not worthless, but not having one is not a
sign of lacking the properties being certified.  UL certification is very
important, but lack of it does not mean your product is unsafe.  It may be
totally safe but either not yet certified or without a certification
methodology.

For OSI the effect is even stronger than for UL.  Every time OSI denies
certification on grounds other than non-conformance to the OSD (such as
redundancy, lack of templatification, etc.), it implicitly concedes that
OSI Certified (tm) and open source are not the same thing.

(While I am at it, there is also a tendency to conflate open source with
open development.  Some of my software is under an open source license but
is not open-developed: that is, I accept no patches for it, though I do
publish it.  When people complain of this policy, I tell them that the code
is open source and they are free to make and maintain their own forks.  I
consider myself part of the community nevertheless.)

> No better than you, me, or anyone else? I disagree with that. We have a
> reputation that we stand behind. OSI certification is more important than
> any other entity's claim of open-source-ness.
>
Of course.  But that does not delegitimate such claims.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Kill Gorgun!  Kill orc-folk!  No other words please Wild Men.  Drive away
bad air and darkness with bright iron!   --Ghan-buri-Ghan
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