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

[Russell McOrmond]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 12:32 PM Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us> wrote:

> 1) "Open Source" has significant brand value.
>
> 2) "Source Available" is very commonly the model chosen by proprietary
> software companies who want to make the source code available but
> don't allow distribution, don't accept contributions, etc. That's
> pretty far from the 'open source development' methodology.
>

The ways in which the "ethical source" movement is different than "open
source" is exactly the distinction with "source available".   Language
matters, and what the key personalities from "ethical source" have stated
they want (author centric licensing) is most often called proprietary
software.

If they wanted to call themselves "Non-profit Proprietary Software" there
would have been no objections, as that is a fairly accurate description of
what they wish to accomplish.  Calling what they are doing "Ethical Open
Source" will cause conflicts as there are many people who disagree that
what they are doing is ethical sourcing (ethical consumerism) or at all
similar to open source (any more than Microsoft's shared source program
was).

The availability of source code is not the defining feature of open source.


I happen to believe that the 'open source development' methodology (AKA:
Commons-based peer production -- see Yochai Benkler's book) is disabled by
discrimination and non-deterministic political interpretations being added
to licensing.   It isn't as bad a problem for projects to have this
discrimination, and forking without permission is possible and sharing
between politically different commons are possible.  But once a license has
this discrimination, it is no longer 'open source development' methodology.


There is such a large focus on whether the OSD can be changed -- I believe
it can, and when necessary should.   I think it is obvious that I don't
believe this is one of those times, except if we decide to possibly add
clarity to the OSD as to why the discrimination some desire must be
excluded from open source.


This is a case where a group of people who have discovered a political
problem haven't yet thought through the consequences of their proposed
solution.  In this case I believe the solution (authors exerting control
over users through non-deterministic discrimination) is outside of what can
be called open source whether or not any specific license conflicted with
the OSD.

-- 
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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