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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>There is nobody more qualified than Heather Meeker to shepherd the creation of a new open source license. She's an expert. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Intelligent and serious consideration went into the OSET Public License (OPL). After a detailed review by this OSI license-review@ committee and perhaps some slight modifications by its authors, this license will almost certainly be approved. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>What concerns me still, though, is how this new license will be absorbed by the open source community and by election officials around the world. Heather correctly criticized me earlier for arguing that this new license is addressing "a non-existent problem." Actually, it is mostly adding to an existing difficult problem. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>David Webber here accurately described "an open source solution stack for a typical voting solution today [that[ includes a whole raft of licenses." Any government agency that intends to acquire an open source election system will inevitably require components such as an operating system, database, printer and scanner drivers, and a main voting software module, presumably under a cornucopia of licenses including Apache, MPL, ECL, GPL, and a whole lot of BSD. We expect FOSS and commercial add-ons that aggregate with that election stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Add to this one more open source license. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>We'll also have to wait for all the potentially interested developer foundations and commercial distributors and customers to understand if the new license is compatible with what they are already doing – specifically for derivative works. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Does anyone here believe that a new open source license will cure the existing confusion among government agencies that already engage in FOSS licensing? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>As for me, I'm personally rather bored with evaluating (yet another) open source license, so I leave the rest of that fun discussion to everyone else. :-)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Have a great holiday weekend!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>/Larry<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>