[License-discuss] Greetings, Earthlings! Need quotes for article

[Richard Fontana]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 05:48:22PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Richard Fontana scripsit:
> 
> > The OSI should have some sort of process for delisting
> > formerly-approved licenses for reasons of failing to actually meet the
> > Open Source Definition (or some future replacement of it). That is to
> > say, the OSI should be willing to admit that it made a mistake, much
> > as a court (while it might ordinarily apply the policy of stare
> > decisis) will in certain cases overrule its prior decisions. Clearly
> > for policy reasons such actions should be exceptional rather than
> > common, and perhaps should be limited to certain licenses that were
> > approved during a particular period in the OSI's existence (I would
> > guess 2000-2005?).
> 
> Fine in principle, but do you actually have examples of such licenses that
> contravene the OSD?  (About future revisions, of course, nothing can be said.)

Well, here's a list of OSI-approved licenses that Tom Callaway and I
judged non-FOSS when we examined them (though I haven't looked at
these in a few years). (This does not include the Artistic License 1.0
and certain of its OSI-approved derivatives, which Fedora treats as
non-FOSS based on FSF precedent.) :

Adaptive Public License http://opensource.org/licenses/apl1.0.php
Frameworx License http://opensource.org/licenses/frameworx.php
OCLC Public Research License 2.0 http://opensource.org/licenses/oclc2.php
Reciprocal Public License http://www.opensource.org/licenses/rpl.php
Ricoh Source Code Public License http://opensource.org/licenses/ricohpl.php
Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0 http://opensource.org/licenses/sybase.php

If a convincing explanation can be given for why these licenses do
meet the OSD, then the problem is the OSD.

 - RF