[License-discuss] Query on "delayed open source" licensing

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

FWIW, I can confirm Larry Rosen's suggestion that indeed L. Peter Deutsch and
Aladdin Ghostscript likely invented the manipulative marketing approach of
pre-announcing that proprietary software might someday be FOSS and/or making
semi-binding public statements or licensing terms that backup that marketing
approach.  (At least, in my 30 years in this field, I've never seen an
example of this that predated the one Larry mentioned.)  Diachronic research
in this area should definitely start there.

Seth quoted Karl Fogel writing:
> > The paper will take no position in the paper on the desirability of DOSP;

I'm sad (but also sadly not surprised) to see that OSI is not willing to
outright criticize this model, since it is primarily a proprietary software
model.

Delayed FOSS is proprietary software, and it's not open source.  I would have
hoped the OSI would take that position, but it seems OSI is more neutral on
proprietary software than against it these days?

IMO, taking a “neutral” position on a practice that is clearly bad for
consumers isn't really neutrality; it's merely tacit support of the incumbent
authority.

Sincerely,
--
Bradley M. Kuhn - he/them