pruning "dead" licenses

Ruth A. Kramer rhkramer at fast.net
Thu Dec 9 23:02:39 UTC 2004


Russell Nelson wrote:
> Roddixon writes:
>  > I think it is nearly impossible to prune licenses without risking
>  > allegations that the certification trademark is being misused.
> 
> I agree with you.  First, I want to make sure that people think it is,
> in principle, a good idea.  Next I'll worry about whether it can be
> done or not.

The concerns I have relate to the word prune.  In general, once a
license has been approved by OSI, I don't think it should be unapproved
by a process of pruning.  (This is not to say that OSI shouldn't have
the ability to unapprove a license under appropriate circumstances.)  

Once approved, anybody should have the right to license their code under
that license and use the OSI trademark(s) or whatever, unless the board
makes a specific statement (following the appropriate procedures) that
such license is deprecated (not recommended that new code be released
under it) or that, somehow (again, following the appropriate procedures)
such approval has been revoked, either for new code, or even for old
code (if that is possible).

regards,
Randy Kramer



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