Approval of IWL - Consolidated Response

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Thu, 29 May 2008, Russ Nelson wrote:
> No, we do not let licensors make changes to a license and keep their
> OSI approval.  If somebody else is named in the license, you can't
> file off their name and put in your own.
>
> Of course, that's an argument for *us* to change the approved licenses
> so they're all templates.

I don't have time to dig through the mail archives to find specific 
examples to the contrary, but this is counter my understanding and advice 
I've given others, based on personal recollection of comments I've seen 
here, that one can change names of people or companies in an OSI-approved 
license, and this changed license should still be considered OSI-approved 
as long as all other terms are left the same.  Most of the licenses in the 
OSI-approved list are non-templatized, and yet there are lots of examples 
of licensors using those licenses with changed names.  Did I miss an 
announcement or specific instance where OSI made such a position official? 
If so, I would have expected it to correlate with an OSI effort to 
templatize the major licenses.

 	Brian