[License-discuss] [License-review] Coherent Open Source - Getting underway next Friday

Sun Oct 20 14:40:57 UTC 2019

Bruce, I'm sorry for the harsh tone of my email to you this Friday. A calm weekend has given me time to think the issue through better.

I actually agree with you that both the BSD and GPL licenses should be acceptable to "both camps," to use Gil's characterization. Indeed, I have recommended the GPL to some of my clients for various reasons in the past, most recently for open source elections software. It is a "good license," although not the best.

But I have had some clients, such as the Apache Software Foundation, whose board refused my legal recommendation that they add the GPL to their list of compatible licenses despite my frequent, loud, and sometimes obnoxious insistence that they should do so to encourage the sharing of open source code within our entire community. They insisted that the FSF had a policy of discouraging such uses by ASF, and they would refuse that license for those policy reasons. It is not fun to be a lawyer whose client disagrees with your legal position. As the old saying goes, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't force its head underneath. (Please do not concern yourself that this is perhaps an ad hominem statement that the Apache board are horses, but personally I believe some of them are.)

I believe that ALL open source licenses allow source code to be freely copied, although not always for derivative works. I hope that the API boundary line will be clearly defined by the Supreme Court in the Oracle v. Google case. For this the GPL is as "good" an open source license as any of the others. But for that same reason, there is no reason to accept your premise that only a few licenses are enough. Licenses serve many competing interests and policy values. More licenses don't hurt, although they may exceed the limited attention of engineers to legal matters. So what? So long as the result is free software that can be shared worldwide for almost all common purposes, I'm happy. 

So, I shouldn't have criticized you for complimenting the acceptability of the GPL, although I still don't like your criticizing all the other good open source licenses that innovative attorneys create.

/Larry 

This email is licensed under  <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/> CC-BY-4.0. Please copy freely.  

From: Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> 
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2019 9:56 AM
To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
Cc: 'Bruce Perens' <bruce at perens.com>; Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
Subject: RE: [License-discuss] [License-review] Coherent Open Source - Getting underway next Friday

Bruce, your opinions are not shared by me and many others. I do not think it would be useful to repeat here my frequent arguments against your view. Fortunately, your vote is minimal. 

By way of contrast, I appreciate Gil's views. FSF needs to change its opinions about license interworking before many will accept those licenses.

Enough from me....

/Larry

From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org <mailto:license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> > On Behalf Of Bruce Perens via License-discuss
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2019 9:10 PM
To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org <mailto:license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> 
Cc: Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com <mailto:bruce at perens.com> >
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] Coherent Open Source - Getting underway next Friday

I reject that these licenses are specific to different communities at all. There are perfectly good strategic reasons why a free software person would use a BSD license, an Open Source person would use a GPL, and all of the licenses are acceptable to both camps . We are not doing restricted-availability licenses because I think they're boring and ultimately useless. We indirectly support dual-licensing if you want to do that, because it works with the GPL.

Gil, I have spent a lot of my time in bringing the free software and open source camps together, because they really are the same thing. I respectfully request that you stop attempting to divide the two communities, because it is harmful to both.

Thanks

Bruce

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 07:24 Gil Yehuda <gyehuda at verizonmedia.com <mailto:gyehuda at verizonmedia.com> > wrote:

Bruce concludes with...

> that achieves most purposes of Open Source/Free Software.

Reading this phrase a few times, something sticks out. We consistently see three camps who leverage licenses for differing reasons. I present this with no intent to judge, but only to describe as accurately as I can.

*       Free: an ethical movement that sees proprietary software as a social wrong/evil. Licenses are designed to reduce this evil. 

*       Open: a crowdsourcing movement that enables networked value production. Licenses allow participants to manage their intentional involvement in unrestricted code sharing, yet not erode proprietary software unintentionally. 

*       Restricted Availability : a method to expose code but restrict some usage. Licenses encourage some users to pay for usage (enabling a business venture) or block usage in restricted domains. 

I think it's better to see the differences between the motivations for Free Software, Open Source, and Source Available models, rather than combine them and find something that fits most of the overlap. 

*       Licenses that enable the ethical movement don't work for many crowdsourcing participants. It forces them to share more than they want. By design.

*       Licenses that enable the crowdsource movement do not satisfy all the goals of the ethical movement, nor do they satisfy the goals of the restricted availability movement. By design.

*       Licenses that enable restrictions do not satisfy the goals of either of the other two movements. Again by design.

So if you are going to propose a reduction exercise (and if it actually takes off this time), let me suggest altering the goal from "achieves most purposes of Open Source/Free Software" to "clarify when a license meets the intent of the Free Software movement, the Open Source movement, or the Restricted Availability movement." Then include the representatives of each movement so they can help clarify where there is overlap and where not. I think this will help each movement to sit comfortably on its turf and know that others are not over-claiming.

tl;dr: People who say "one size fits most" mean "one size fits me."

Gil Yehuda: I help with external technology engagement

>From the Open Source Program Office <https://developer.yahoo.com/opensource/docs/>  at Yahoo / Verizon Media

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 9:29 AM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com <mailto:van.lindberg at gmail.com> > wrote:

[Responding on license-discuss]

I look forward to you endorsing the CAL, the ISC license, and MPL2 as the only licenses necessary for anyone to use.

More seriously, is this the "only three licenses are necessary" argument, or is there a different set? If so, why? 

Thanks,

Van

On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 8:29 PM Bruce Perens via License-review <license-review at lists.opensource.org <mailto:license-review at lists.opensource.org> > wrote:

Friday next week at Open Core Summit, I will announce COHERENT OPEN SOURCE. Let's scrap the Tower of Babel of 100+ Open Source licenses, for a minimal set, FSF/OSI approved, cross-compatible, that achieves most purposes of Open Source/Free Software.
 -- 

Bruce Perens - Partner, OSS.Capital <http://OSS.Capital> .

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