[License-review] [CAVO] Submission of OSET Public License for Approval

Patrick Masson masson at opensource.org
Mon Sep 7 19:06:55 UTC 2015


On Sun, 2015-09-06 at 13:51 -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:34:15AM -0700, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> > I'm concentrating instead on OSET's argument that government
> agencies need this license in order to properly acquire FOSS election
> software. If that's a valid fear, our community has some work to do to
> fix it -- and not necessarily introduce another license to gloss it
> over.
> 
> I will say that I'm rather skeptical of this argument.


I too do not understand the argument around procurement (this is an
honest statement of ignorance, not a set up for a counter argument). 

As a former CIO and CTO within public higher education, I worked with
both state and public university procurement offices. In that time we
acquired open source software distributed under a variety of licenses
(e.g. Moodle via the GPL <https://docs.moodle.org/dev/License>; Sakai
via Apache and Educational Community License
<https://www.apereo.org/licensing/>, etc.). We also procured systems and
services from commercial vendors that included open source licensed
software bundled with proprietary software (e.g. Apple computers
<http://www.apple.com/opensource/>, Instructure Canvas via an open core
model with AGPL <https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki>).

Never once while working within the University of California, State
University of New York nor University of Massachusetts, did I hear
procurement officers or contract managers raise issues around open
source licensing. Again, I and my colleagues may be ignorant of the
issues OSET has identified, but I would very much like to learn more.
Especially as I still provide consultation to UMass. I will also follow
up with my colleagues within UMass' procurement and legal offices. In
the mean time, can someone point me to the relevant discussions,
information around this?

Thank you,
Patrick



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Patrick Masson
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