[License-discuss] The political / technical dichotomy

[Bruce Perens]

One of the largest problems in getting the patent policy done at W3C was
that W3C had always been able to develop consensus on any decision, *until
then. *The patent policy, which allowed the continuation of Open Source
implementations of web servers and browsers, developed no consensus, and
one member (Philips, famous for collecting tremendous royalties on the
Cassette tape) walked off of W3C as a result of the decision.

This is important in the context of license approval, because licenses are
very likely to be the subject of political argument as much as technical,
and discussion is often likely to end in no consensus.

We should keep this in mind as we consider processes like PEP. They are
designed to create consensus, and their subject has mainly been technical
issues where consensus is easier to form. Just how will they handle a
failure to achieve consensus?

    Thanks

    Bruce
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