Three new proposed OSD terms

[Steve Quinn]

>Russell Nelson wrote:
> Don't go shopping for shampoo, toothpaste, or antiperspirant, then.

At least if I am shopping for shampoo, toothpaste, etc. I can quickly review the products and identify those that I believe will fulfill my purpose. If I am shopping for a Shampoo/Conditioner combination, I can tell which ones meet that criteria.  The same if I want toothpaste with Fluoride.  This is not true when shopping for an open systems license.  

>Do what I do: assume that they're mostly the same and choose one that you like the looks >of.  If, on the other hand, the exact nature of the license is important to you, then 
>you're going to have to evaluate all of them.  Having fewer licenses would equally fail >to satisfy you because you wouldn't be able to get the exact license of your choosing.  >You'd have to choose one of the blessed ones.

Making an assumption is not my preferred way of making a decision, especially when dealing with contracts, boards of directors, and intellectual property issues.  But, you are probably correct that fewer licenses is not, by definition, the solution to the problem.  Having fewer licenses however, I believe, would reduce the effort involved in evaluating the "approved" licenses to find the right one for us.  Not that this is necessarily a reason to reduce the number of licenses.  Optionally, some descriptive blurb or check list describing each license, would be very helpful.  Some way as with your shopping example, that I as well as others can quickly find the licenses that are peppermint flavored, have fluoride and also have a whitening agent.  With the list of possible licenses narrowed by some selection criteria, I can now go about the process, in a reasonable manner, of determining the right license for our situation.

I strongly agree with the statement by Martin Fink in an earlier post... "I just want to make sure that 10 years from now the OSS model actually still works.  That's all - plain and simple.".  One of the things that has to happen to keep the OSS model working is to attract new participants...getting companies like mine to move from a proprietary software model to an open software model.  Complexity in the licensing (meaning both the number of "approved" licenses and complexity in their compatibility) will only tend to delay or possibly discourage such actions. 

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Nelson [mailto:nelson at crynwr.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 11:23 PM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: RE: Three new proposed OSD terms

 > As a new user to this list and as someone planning to release multiple  > projects under one or more open source licenses, I can tell you that it  > is a nightmare trying to determine the right license to use.

Don't go shopping for shampoo, toothpaste, or antiperspirant, then.

Do what I do: assume that they're mostly the same and choose one that you like the looks of.  If, on the other hand, the exact nature of the license is important to you, then you're going to have to evaluate all of them.  Having fewer licenses would equally fail to satisfy you because you wouldn't be able to get the exact license of your choosing.  You'd have to choose one of the blessed ones.

Your concern would not be addressed by fewer licenses.

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