<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 8:12 AM Pamela Chestek <<a href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com">pamela@chesteklegal.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Speaking personally still (have I made that clear enough yet?), I am
strongly opposed to any "because we say so" standard of license
approval.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Indeed. As I have doubtless said before (one grows garrulous in one's old age), lawyer say that the law is what the judge says, and this is pretty good advice for lawyers. But it doesn't help judges, who are sworn to do justice according to law. On the gripping hand, some people will never "get it", whether because they are obtuse or because of Upton Sinclair's remark that you cannot get a man to understand a thing if his salary depends on his not understanding it. In the end one can only say what Mr. Bennett said to his enthusiastic but untalented piano-playing daughter: "Thank you Mary, you have entertained us quite enough."<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">However, Richard Fontana has pointed out the process problem where
there is a pile-on in license-review, causing the license submitter
to withdraw the license and then no opportunity for the OSI to
provide any feedback on what the OSI itself actually thought about
the license. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I myself have only seen such pile-ons when the license was obviously hopelessly flawed and there was no need for OSI to bother considering it. IIRC, licenses were once submitted to OSI in confidence and only discussed publicly afterwards, which seemed like a waste of both OSI and license-discuss/review (not yet differentiated back in the Palaeocene) members' time. The order was duly inverted.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Should the OSI be in the business of giving "advisory
opinions," and if so, how? </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think not. Actual submissions (as in "actual cases or controversies") are quite enough work, and advisory opinions historically haven't gone well. The Stuart kings had a habit of asking their judges for advisory opinions, and a short way with those who gave opinions they didn't like. There are a few cases in a few U.S. states of governors or legislatures asking for advisory opinions, but overall they are what Topf called them in his 2011 book: a doubtful and perilous experiment.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">How about how the "Master's-Console Open
Source Definitive License," a license clearly not ready for review,
was handled? The problems were quite obvious with it, so does
anything more need to be said about it? ICYMI, I sent out an email
stating we were assuming that it was withdrawn because the submitter
moved the discussion to L-D, although never communicated to us that
it was formally withdrawn. Should this have been handled
differently?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Sounds right to me.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">And what about a license that is approved? Every license has flaws
that people note. Should a rationale document explain why these
weren't considered problematic, or is approval good enough?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Although the OSI has no inferior courts to instruct, giving the ratio decidendi can never be a Bad Thing, though of course it costs time and energy to produce one (for which no one is paid, unlike judges).</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>John Cowan <a href="http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan">http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan</a> <a href="mailto:cowan@ccil.org">cowan@ccil.org</a><br>Assent may be registered by a signature, a handshake, or a click of a computer<br>mouse transmitted across the invisible ether of the Internet. Formality<br>is not a requisite; any sign, symbol or action, or even willful inaction,<br>as long as it is unequivocally referable to the promise, may create a contract.<br> --Specht v. Netscape<br></div><div><br></div></div></div>