[License-review] For Approval: Rewrite of License Zero Reciprocal Public License

[Kyle Mitchell]

On 2017-11-13 09:11, Josh berkus wrote:
> On 11/08/2017 11:10 PM, Kyle Mitchell wrote:
> > I so wish that my first e-mail to license-discuss had been a
> > request for an overview of the process, soup to nuts.
> > Instead, I did what looked for all the world like my
> > homework, and followed its instructions.  I can't help
> > feeling that's hurt more than helped me.
>
> You are submitting for approval a license which does several things
> which no license previously approved by the OSI does.
>
> If you thought that reviewing such a license was going to be either fast
> or straightforwards, or that committee members would be unanimous in our
> evaluation of criteria or recommendations, then I'm sorry.  Hopefully
> your expectations are updated now.
>
> Frankly, I'm not clear why you would have such an expectation.  Your
> plans and business model for LicenseZero.com have been even more
> controversial within the javascript community.

Good to hear from you again, Josh.

I did not expect the process to be fast or straightforward.
Which is to say, I did not expect it to be easy. But I
expected it to be focused on application of the Definition
to the license, per the docs.

There is plenty of controversy in the JavaScript community
and elsewhere. I'm at the center of it. But little has to do
with the Definition, known to relatively few JavaScript
developers. (I tried to help with automatic OSI-approved
license detection on npmjs.com.) Much of the discussion
focuses on the business model, which doesn't follow from use
of the license, any more than Mongo's business model follows
from use of AGPL.

If all of those concerns, extraneous to the license, are
part of the OSI license approval process, too, then I
understand why Bruce and others have told me to shop out
there, before bringing in here. Fora "out there" are far
more accessible to the community, and would bring more
eyeballs to make bugs shallow. But I wonder, having debated,
refined, and achieved a measure of acceptance out there, why
I'd then bring it here, if the analysis is much the same.

-- 
Kyle Mitchell, attorney // Oakland // (510) 712 - 0933