BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[Donovan Hawkins]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Chris Travers wrote:

> I would add that the license needs to be as short as possible.
> Clarity is not always found in length.  (Quite frankly it is unclear
> to me whether the AFL requires source code redistribution in verbatim
> copying relating to a collective work, as this would involve someone
> sublicensing the original work to downstream licensees.)

If a license replaces just BSDL (or just MIT, etc), then it should be 
pretty darned short. If it were modular to the point that it replaced 
most of the permissive licenses, I think it could be significantly longer. 
To address people who would be unhappy with the length, having a "plain 
English" description (a la Creative Commons) would be fairly effective.

"Efficient" is critical. "Short" may or may not be, though some people 
might insist on it.

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Donovan Hawkins, PhD                 "The study of physics will always be
Software Engineer                     safer than biology, for while the
hawkins at cephira.com                   hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
http://www.cephira.com                biological ones grow exponentially."
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