[License-discuss] License licenses

[John Cowan]

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 1:45 PM Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us> wrote:

> I don't mean to be abrasive here, but this thread demonstrates one of
> the problems with the license-discuss/review mailing lists. It's not
> unique to these lists, but solving it requires discipline.
>
> Please try to stay on topic. Patrick started this thread with a very
> straightforward request for license stewards to provide information
> about their licenses, and now the thread is rehashing preferences for
> one license over another, OSL vs. GPL, etc, and hypothesizing what a
> future OSL could be. None of that is inappropriate for this list, but
> it's off topic for this thread, and that makes it harder for people
> who want to participate in specific discussions to do so. As a regular
> Discourse user, I can say that this is one *huge* benefit of that tool
> over regular mailing lists: threads can be split off into separate
> topics, so that readers and others can follow the topics they care
> about and don't have to wade through things they don't care about.
> Yes, the 'delete' key is right there, and it's not hard to press it,
> but when someone posts a message which is both on-topic and off-topic
> (as happens often), readers have no choice but to read through it all
> to find the parts that are relevant.
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 11:27 AM John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 1:11 AM James <purpleidea at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> FWIW, I only consider about five different licenses for new projects.
> >> Not because they're necessarily better than OSL (I never investigated
> >> that deeply) but because I am against license proliferation, and the
> >> existing five are good enough.
> >
> >
> > I have a more specific reason for disliking the OSL.  The GPL creates a
> separate commons from
> > all the permissive open source licenses together because any programs
> with GPL components
> > must (according to common understanding) be released under the GPL.  In
> fact there are
> > two such commons, one for GPL-2-only and the other for GPL-2-upgradeable
> plus GPL-3.
> >
> > The OSL also creates its own commons, one that is never going to catch
> up in size and richness
> > with the GPL's.  Furthermore, there is a separate commons for the
> Non-Profit OSL, and apparently
> > for each version of both.  Therefore I would always discourage people
> from using it despite its impeccable
> > FLOSS Buddha-nature.  This does *not* apply to the AFL.
> >
> > But if 1(c) in both the OSL and the NPOSLwere modified in a new version
> 4 from:
> >
> >> with the proviso that copies of Original Work or Derivative Works that
> You distribute or communicate shall be licensed under this Open Software
> License
> >
> >
> > to:
> >
> >> with the proviso that copies of Original Work shall be licensed under
> this Open Software License, and Derivative Works that You distribute or
> communicate shall be licensed either any version of this Open Software
> License or of the Non-Profit Open Software
> >> License or in the alternative under any version of the GNU General
> Public License
> >
> >
> > (or words to that effect), I would withdraw my objection.
> >
> > This can already be achieved on a case-by-case basis by
> multiple-licensing language like "licensed under the
> > OSL version 3.0 or, at the user's option, under any later version of the
> OSL, under the GNU GPL version 2, or
> > any later version of the GNU GPL", but most people aren't going to
> bother with that.  I'd like it to be an
> > inherent part of the OSL.
> >
> >
> > John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
> > Normally I can handle panic attacks on my own; but panic is, at the
> moment,
> > a way of life.                 --Joseph Zitt
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
> >
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>
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