[License-discuss] Evolving the License Review process for OSI

[Russell McOrmond]

On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 4:52 PM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> IMO, this OSI mailing list is a natural place for people supportive of
> OSI's real-world objectives.
>

The OSI as an organisation is free to determine its own objectives.
Whether they are in-line with what other people consider to be the
real-world objectives of software freedom can and does change over time.

My interest in Free Software was to ensure that the rules that governed
computers were transparent and accountable to the owners of those
computers.  This to me is what the Free Software definition, and the
derivative Open Source definition, were all about.

Then came along software patents which made discussion of copyright-only
licenses necessary but not sufficient for software freedom.
Then came along attacks on private modification with Affero licenses which
I believe will have the harmful consequence of expanding the scope of
copyright law.
Then came along hardware that didn't allow owners to make their own
software choices, and inappropriate laws protecting this attack on
technology property rights.
And now some in the FLOSS community want a say in what a user of software
that is neither modifying or distributing it does with that software.


I consider all of that incompatible with the real-world objectives of the
FLOSS movement, but recognise that at this specific time in the life of the
movement that I'm in the minority.
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