[License-review] When a submission for approval stops being one (was: For Approval: License Zero Reciprocal Public License)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Kyle Mitchell (kyle at kemitchell.com):

> As for the "draft" designation, for what it's worth, I used
> that term, and adopted that mindset, after reading this bit
> of https://opensource.org/approval:
[...]

Good point.  Sorry, I completely missed that nuance, and overinterpreted 
your wording.  

At the same time, it's definitely true that you've been doing an
unusually large amount of post-submission redrafting.  While I can only
admire your patience and intelligent responses, I'll confess that I held
back until today in part because this whole thread seemed a time sink,
despite good intentions.  And I think I you're right about widespread
weariness.

> As for adoption, I think we're all aware of its chicken-and-egg
> dynamic with OSI approval.

Quite so.  And I'm willing to speculate (as always, speaking for myself)
that people's willingness to consider new licences is also influenced by
the perception that too many questionable licences have been approved in
the past.


> Frankly, I won't be cajoling anyone, even my friends, to will a
> demonstrable licensor-user base into being for license-review.

I will put this in the form of a question because I might be missing
something:  If a new (but unconsidered by OSI) open source licence has
distinctive and compelling utility, why isn't it going to draw a
demonstrable licensor-user base without certification?  To be flip, the
way ones knows something is compelling is that it compels.

I've always seen the OSI Certified programme as conceptually similar in
aim to IETF's RFC programme -- in the sense of recognising current best
practices, with particular attention to those widely adopted.   I think
this is a bug, not a feature, from the perspective of OSI's overall
mission to further the interests of open source.  (For IETF's criteria
for RFCs, see section 6 of 'The Tao of IETF', at 
https://www.ietf.org/tao.html .)

But yes, you also definitely have an excellent point that L0-R
introduces one of the very few truly novel approaches we've seen in many
a year, and you have my unabashed admiration for that.