[License-discuss] [License-review] Volunteers for tagging licenses

[Dirk Riehle]

Hi Pamela, all:

> In June 2023, the License Review Working Group completed its work 
> revising the license review process. There was an outstanding task 
> that grew out of the Working Group, which was to create tags for the 
> approved licenses that could be used as an aid in filtering approved 
> licenses for their characteristics.
>
> There are two stages to this task. The first stage is to create a list 
> of tags to be attached to licenses. There is already a preliminary 
> list 
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1svyrUgE6xwzaNO4xnhTT0-pHPblwBm__BArtttkQWxk/edit?usp=sharing>, 
> so we should be able to complete this task in a fairly short period of 
> time.

I looked at the list and wondered about its purpose. The tags doesn't 
say anything about rights, presumably they are all the same for open 
source licenses. But they also don't say anything about disclaimers and 
prohibitions?

If this is primarily about obligations, I wanted to point out that 
German lawyers created a comprehensive system for explaining license 
obligations, including instructions on how to fulfill them, using some 
form of pseudo code ("if this do that"). I'm talking about the OSADL 
folks though I think this stuff is still paywalled.

I'm not sure the OSI is up for it but some authoritative model of 
license obligations and how to fulfill them would be great. The tags 
don't have to state how the obligations should be fulfilled, however, 
their completeness and quality would make it much easier to develop such 
instructions based on an authoritative ontology (hierarchical list of tags).

Cheers, Dirk

> The second stage is to add the tags to the existing licenses. I would 
> like to have as many people as possible willing to assist in this 
> task. There are over 100 licenses and I would like to have each 
> license reviewed by two people, a primary reviewer and verifier. You 
> do not have to be a lawyer to participate, only comfortable reading 
> and understanding open source licenses.
>
> If you are interested in helping with this task, please respond to me 
> only (to save spamming everyone).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pam Chestek
> Chair, License Review Committee
> Open Source Initiative
>
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