License Committee Report for April 2009

[Russ Nelson]

Yeah, is there something wrong with the Reply-To: header I inserted?
-russ

Andrew Oliver writes:
 > Guys...can we PLEASE not cross post this stuff.
 > 
 > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:00 PM, Ernest Prabhakar
 > <ernest.prabhakar at gmail.com> wrote:
 > > Hi Alon,
 > >
 > > On Mar 31, 2009, at 4:15 PM, Alon von Bismark wrote:
 > >>
 > >> Is "the chair of the license approval committee" still in denial to
 > >> accept the WTFPL (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL>)
 > >
 > > I don't think there's any need to personalize this.  From what I've been
 > > able to follow (which admittedly isn't everything), the majority of
 > > commenters were similarly unhappy with the license, and there appears to be
 > > genuine uncertainty about whether the license is sufficiently legally sound
 > > to be worthy of inflicting upon the open source community.
 > >
 > >> as a license fully conforming to the OSD?
 > >
 > > Conforming to the OSD is a necessary but not sufficient condition.  The OSI
 > > has both the right and obligation to ensure that approving the license is a
 > > net benefit to the community, given considerations of proliferation,
 > > validity, and comprehensibility.
 > >
 > >> If so, "the chair of the license approval
 > >> committee" might want to explain his reasoning, apart from the
 > >> hypotetical "cannot be mentioned in polite company" argument, using
 > >> legal concept(s), please. Thank you in advance.
 > >
 > > From what I can tell, either "Do whatever you want" is literally true, in
 > > which case it offers nothing over public domain --  or, if you insist on an
 > > international equivalent, CC0: http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/
 > >
 > > Or, if it is not _really_ true that I can do whatever I want, it is a
 > > misleading title, and worthy of rejection on the grounds of potential
 > > confusion.
 > >
 > > -- Ernie P.
 > > OSI Board Observer
 > >
 > >
 > >
 > >