[License-review] For Approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License

[Josh Berkus]

Bruce, Pamela:

>> One of the main reasons given by the committee is that there was
>> /insufficient discussion/ on license-review. In your message
>> <8d5fb3a8-86f5-89fa-4f3e-1ac5978af3b1 at opensource.org
>> <mailto:8d5fb3a8-86f5-89fa-4f3e-1ac5978af3b1 at opensource.org>>, of Fri,
>> May 10, 5:51 PM you wrote "Thank you very much, your opinions have
>> been noted", which I took as the chair's  direction for me to
>> terminate discussion of the license. This is ironic given the response
>> of the committee.
> One person stating the same point over and over again doesn't indicate
> anything.  We need more diversity of opinion, or at least more voices
> with the same opinion so that we know the opinion is commonly held.

Not sure about that; this list is noisy enough that I think most of us
hold back if we agree with an already-stated viewpoint.  If you really
want to get a straw poll of agreement, it would be far better to have a
tool that let us vote up/down critiques of proposed licenses than wait
for "me, too" posts on a mailing list.

For my part, the CAL already had enough substantial objections to it
recorded that it didn't feel like it needed any further discussion. I
mean, if the engine is on fire, I'm not gonna check the tires for air.

>> Of course, we would also have more discussion if additional
>> well-informed people with a diversity of opinions actually joined the
>> list. Which I believe was the intent of the restructuring of the
>> license committee. But I don't see them yet. Until we find a way to
>> persuade them to show up, a temporary fix might be for the OSI board
>> to become more active participants on this list.
> It's only been a month or two. It will take time.

Again, switching away from a freeform mailing list to some form of more
structured markup (such as an issue tracker, VCS, or document
collaboration platform) is the only way you're going to get broader
participation.  This list is currently limited to the tiny slice of
folks who have both the time and the motivation to read all of it.  If I
wasn't able to spend work time here, I couldn't contribute either.

And "restructuring" that you attempt to do that keeps L-R as purely a
freeform list is going to be completely futile, and you're better off
not bothering.

-- 
Josh Berkus