<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/13/22 22:48, Lawrence Rosen
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:080f01d90f6e$e0d6c110$a2844330$@rosenlaw.com">Brad and
the OSI have ONLY the authority to determine whether licenses
satisfy the Open Source Definition AND NOTHING MORE.</blockquote>
<p>Yesbut. We are also the representatives of the idea of Open
Source to the community. As such, we have a responsibility to
promote the creation, promulgation, distribution, and use of Open
Source software. Taking that into account, are we well or poorly
served by having a proliferation of slightly different licenses?</p>
<p>That's not a new discussion. Not new at all. But since your point
is in fact true, what can we do about license proliferation?</p>
<p>Not nothing, I claim. Here are my somethings:</p>
<ol>
<li>We can merge the entire class of BSD licenses into a
parameterized BSD license. So instead of a "BSD" license, we
have a "BSD-2,3" license, and instead of a "MIT" license, we
have a "BSD-1,3" license, and we replace the approval listing
for those two to point to the parameterized license. That will
help people to see the differences between BSD-class licenses.</li>
<li>We can go through all the licenses to see how many are
actually being used in new software, and deprecate ( "do not use
in new software" ) any licenses which are not being used for new
software.</li>
<li>If there are some lightly used licenses and if the license
permits it, fork all existing software under an appropriate more
heavily used license.</li>
<li>Following up on #1 and #4, persuade users of lightly used
licenses to switch to an appropriate more heavily used license.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Abusing Rabbi Hillel, "There are only two licenses: reciprocal
and public. All the rest is commentary".<br>
</p>
</body>
</html>