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

[Jim Jagielski]

> On Oct 27, 2023, at 2:06 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at ebb.org> wrote:
> 
> 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.

I think that OSI is basically pragmatic regarding proprietary software; if it was actively and aggressively against it then so-called permissive licenses would be verboten.

> 
> 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?

I agree that delayed FOSS is not open source. I also agree that OSI is ideally situated to be a major voice in clearing up that FUD and opposing the abuse of the term Open Source. Unfortunately, doing so is not as sexy or as liable to get press as is getting involved in areas of tech which have tangential associations with open source (eg: "Open Source AI").