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<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have only been
reading this list for a short time. However, it really seems to me that the OSI
needs to sit down and do for open source licensing what Creative Commons has
done for general copyright licensing. The people of the OSI need to sit down and
list all the different features that people want in an open source license. All
the different rights that an original developer wants to give to users of their
code. All the different responsibilities that using such rights will require.
Then the OSI needs to create a system where an original developer can easily
just check off the rights and responsibilities they want to confer to users of
their code and quickly create just the license they need. Each of these rights
and responsibilities could be encoded so that the full text of the license
wouldn't need to be included in each and every tiny piece of source-code that
was used. Developers could just include a URL to the OSI web site with a code
indicating the type of license. Perhaps even a snippet of XML allowing different
responsibilities to be listed for different rights. So, in-house use could
require a certain set of responsibilities, commercial use could require a
different set of responsibilities, and open distribution could require yet a
different set of responsibilities. In essence, an XML standard for
licensing, if you will.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial size=2>The system would
know which of the different licensing terms were contradictory or incompatible
and warn whoever was building the license of this, or preferably prevent those
licenses from being generated at all. The system could also allow subsequent
developers to add or remove rights or responsibilities as long as those changes
were compatible with the original license. Rather than needing to pour over a
license to see if it were legal to add or remove a right or responsibility and
debate it endlessly in this forum, a subsequent developer could simply go to
this web site and enter the snippet of XML given in the original source-code.
The web site would then present them with a list of what rights and
responsibilities they could modify to grant more or fewer privileges to any
other developers subsequent to them. The web site could even allow the user of
any open-source code to enter the license codes (XML snippets) of all the
different pieces or open-source software they were thinking of using for their
project and it would instantly tell them if the licenses for all those pieces of
source-code would be compatible for use within the same derivative
work.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial>It might even
be possible for this "system" to be an XML schema designed such that anyone
could use it to build or modify a license with basic XML editing software.
Finally, an </FONT><FONT face=Arial>XSLT </FONT><FONT face=Arial>could be
created that converts the license XML "documents" into full text licenses. This
would provide consistency while preventing self-contradictory
licenses.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=296435918-21042007><FONT face=Arial size=2>I think this would
be much better than the mish-mash of licenses that currently exist. These first
generation licenses were created in a vacuum, so I can see why the first few of
them were written as independent works with different and contradictory wording.
But it has been 18 years since the first GNU license was released. I would think
that a community of software developers would have come up with something more
standardized than just saying "Apache + limitations" or "MIT + BSD" or whatever,
by now.</FONT></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>