[License-review] Adapting the license-review process to AI

[Pamela Chestek]

On 9/10/2024 2:38 AM, Roland Turner via License-review wrote:
>
>   * But limiting review and approval merely to component terms
>     destroys the meaning of OSI-approval for OSAID (because there
>     would be no such thing), in that it is by no means certain that
>     the combination of a set of compliant component terms will
>     automatically yield a compliant whole[3].
>
> Naturally the few hundred largest systems will engage teams of lawyers 
> to tailor their terms — particularly at this early stage of 
> development — and these organisations are free to seek OSI approval 
> for their specific constellation of terms should they wish to, but 
> leaving the next million projects in the lurch, having to cobble their 
> own system terms together seems like a serious problem. Yes, OSI can't 
> and doesn't offer legal advice, but the availability of a body of 
> "likely reasonable" approved terms for selection at the very beginning 
> of a small project has been a very important benefit of OSI's approval 
> process (and the reason for a published list of approved licenses, and 
> for the non-proliferation work, etc.). I'd suggest that it would be 
> serious own-goal for OSI to fail to provide analogous 
> whole-system-terms approvals for the OSAID.
>
You've identified one reason why the OSI will not be doing this work. 
"Engage teams of lawyers" -- yes, that's what it will take to develop 
the necessary agreement or agreements and the OSI does not have access 
to teams of lawyers, or at least not ones that have the capacity to 
undertake this work as volunteers.

A second reason is that it is going to take some creativity to create a 
document or documents that ensure the necessary freedoms are granted. I 
don't know anyone who has figured it out yet, although a lot of people 
are thinking about it. We don't even all agree on what rights mechanisms 
might apply to models in particular, and data to a lesser degree. 
Copyleft was a brilliant insight; there may be an equally brilliant 
insight that figures out how to manage this much more difficult area. 
This area needs room to develop, which may not happen if the OSI 
dictates what it believes the correct approach is, including whether 
that is a single license for all components or separate licenses for 
different components.

A third reason is that there are already licensing schemes in use. We 
don't want to create greater barriers to entry by forcing someone to 
adopt our standard when theirs might be perfectly fine with a tweak or two.

> *Stefano*, is there a current documented position on the intended 
> approach?

No, there is not.

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek
Chair, Licensing Committee
Open Source Initiative
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