[License-discuss] Issue on licenses pages

[Lawrence Rosen]

Hi Luis,

I've no idea what happened to those early licenses on the OSI website. I
lost track of OSI website updates after a while. 

Several years ago in an email to someone here I specifically "deprecated"
early versions of my OSL/AFL licenses, as that term was then understood,
meaning that their author had no desire to recommend those license any
longer for new software. As I understand it, however, FOSS licensing is
forever, so deprecation wasn't supposed to mean any licensing changes to
FOSS software that had already been distributed voluntarily under those
licenses. Erasure of those licenses from the OSI website wasn't my
intention.

All that old, previously licensed OSL/AFL software remains FOSS! Continue to
use it as the licenses allow.

I'm waiting for you to stabilize your website template for license
descriptions and I'll be glad to post complete documentation (including
perhaps some history) for all of my licenses. I noticed recently, however,
that the link to an extensive FAQ I wrote about OSL/AFL no longer works on
your website, so I'm waiting for you to clean that up first. 

And you also need to promise me in return that you won't waste my
documentation effort by continuing to classify OSL 3.0 under
"Other/Miscellaneous licenses"; AFL 3.0 under "Licenses that are redundant
with more popular licenses"; and NOSL 3.0 under "Uncategorized Licenses".
All such categories mean is that you don't understand the licenses, which is
a shame to say about OSI.

These licenses were a serious attempt by your predecessors as OSI board
members to include good patent provisions in their FOSS copyright licenses.
Lots of licenses have since made similar transitions and they also deserve
accurate historical and legal footnotes on your website. 

Thanks for your efforts. I know from my own history how much of a challenge
this is.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
Office: 707-485-1242
Linkedin profile: http://linkd.in/XXpHyu 


-----Original Message-----
From: Luis Villa [mailto:luis at lu.is] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 9:10 AM
To: License Discuss; Lawrence Rosen
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Issue on licenses pages

[I've been on vacation, and/or preparing for vacation; apologies for my slow
responses here, which will continue through Sunday.]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Engel Nyst <engel.nyst at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the text intended to no longer be accessible?

As far as I know, this is not intentional; as Larry hinted at, there was
certainly heavy politics around those licenses, but I don't believe they
were intentionally removed from the website. Larry, is that the case? If
they were not removed at your request, Larry, I'm happy to have them
re-added. (If they were removed at the request of someone other than Larry,
I'm more than happy to fix/clarify the historical record.)

Luis