<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:07 AM Smith, McCoy <<a href="mailto:mccoy.smith@intel.com">mccoy.smith@intel.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">I think it would be very useful for the OSI to make this policy more explicit, perhaps by announcing it on the license submission
page.</span></p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div>I don't really have a problem with OSI stating that approved licenses are not precedential. But McCoy, none of these submitted licenses are doing <i>exactly</i> what the others are, so in general the arguments about precedent are a stretch.</div><div><br></div><div>Also, OSI has accepted some crayon licenses during its history for ill-advised political more than legal reasons. So, we very definitely don't want to give some of those garbage licenses the power of precedent.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_2894860249622084544WordSection1"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">I tend to be of a more radical persuasion that there are some provisions of the OSD that can be a bit ambiguous in the way that they
are currently drafted, </span></p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div>No lawyer would help me (or the Debian project for which this was drafted) at the time, and it's held up very well considering that. It is not the language I would write today, but it achieves the same purpose I would still have today.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_2894860249622084544WordSection1"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">I believe there
should be room for some clarification on the OSD wording (possibly even some revision of the OSD – “OSD 2.0,” perhaps?, or at least some more explicit interpretive history presented on the OSD, and license submission, webpages, so that current readers of the
OSD, and future license drafters attempting to conform to the OSD, have better guidance.</span></p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div>Unfortunately, I think you would find that latitude among the approvers would still be necessary to prevent gaming of the OSD to introduce unfortunate elements into the ecology of Open Source. The vast body of professionally-written law in the United States, including the Constitution itself, does not work stand-alone in courts. It is dependent upon a much larger body of case law, expert testimony, and scholarship. So, the fact that license approval rests upon interpretation of the OSD doesn't make it particularly different from civil and criminal law.</div><div><br></div><div>But I have a simpler solution for you. Draw up your own rules and call it anything but "Open Source" (well, the Free Software folks don't want you calling it that either). Nobody is stopping you. Let the better process win.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_2894860249622084544WordSection1"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">If I had the time, and the inclination, I might be motivated to write a paper on this topic – taking the OSD, pulling apart the currently-presented
language around it and analyzing how it has been interpreted over various years of license analysis (pre-, and perhaps post-, submission). That’d take a lot of work (and would require some access to 20 years of submission history). I’m wondering if anyone
is interested in taking up such a task? I know a law journal that would likely be interested in publishing something like that.</span></p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div>We don't have access to board deliberation, internal correspondence, and even unbroken access to the record of this mailing list. There are a number of people who could be interviewed, some of us are getting long in the tooth.</div><div><br></div><div>Certainly I participated in this process only as an outsider (not a board member) for most of my history with it, and even in my case there is a decade-long break in participation. During much of that period I was persona non grata with the board or at least its president, and their thoughts on licensing were not available to me.</div><div><br></div><div> Thanks</div><div><br></div><div> Bruce</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_2894860249622084544WordSection1"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Bruce Perens K6BP - CEO, Legal Engineering<br>Standards committee chair, license review committee member, co-founder, Open Source Initiative<div>President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom Initiative.<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>