OVPL - time for the client to speak directly?

[Alex Bligh]

Andrew et al.,

--On 16 November 2005 10:16 -0800 "Wilson, Andrew" 
<andrew.wilson at intel.com> wrote:

> All, just an observation that this list has probably seen
> more traffic about OVPL than any other license (or any two, three,
> or four licenses) ever submitted, yet none of the traffic
> so far has been directly with the principals who are driving
> the license.  My understanding is that Alex Bligh is representing
> OVPL on behalf of an unnamed client.
...
> They need to be very specific and very convincing about
> why opt-out, opt-in, or just plain CDDL with a contributor's
> agreement won't do the job for them.

I think I can do that on behalf of said unnamed client by naming them (I
have already done so to the board).

The client is Xara Ltd:
 http://www.xara.com/
 http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

The project is a graphics design program, C++ source code, seven digits of
source code lines. You should see source-code and further licensing details
imminently.

As I explained in my (recent) message to the board, we had a lot of
internal debate over what to do re licensing. Eventually (and this was a
month or so ago, i.e. prior to the board decision) we opted in the end to
go for GPL plus a contributor agreement - this was in part because license
approval was getting nowhere, but also in part because we've heard what
people have to say re mandatory license-back. Hence since then, I've been
pretty quiet on here re OVPL. However, I did not have permission to
identify the client at that point (I do now). Since David Ryan and others
(e.g. David Barrett) continued to want to push for approval for their own
uses, we continued to seek approval for the license for others.

So the answer to your question re this particular client is closest to the
last. I'm happy to take "why GPL rather than CDDL" etc. questions off-list
rather than clogging up people's inboxes.

I'd like to repeat publicly what I said in my message to the board, and
thank people for the time and effort they put in to reviewing OVPL. I'd
further like to add that despite my occasional criticism about process and
transparency at the OSI, we had a very useful teleconference with Russ and
Danese, who I'd like to thank particularly, prior to the last board
meeting. Without making this into the oscars, I'd also particularly like to
thank Simon Phipps at Sun and the other CDDL folks for their time. I know
there is a view that this outcome (largish project licensed under GPL
rather than a license some see as not in the spirit of open source) is a
success for open-source, rather than a waste of everyone's time, and I'd
tend to agree, though I suspect the issue of mandatory license-back has not
gone away for good.

Our current plan is to leave it (the site) as is, so that people
may borrow from it etc. as they wish. However, I (personally) do not expect
to be pushing the issue myself and further filling Russ's inbox on the
subject - a matter of which I'm sure he will be glad :-)

Alex