[License-discuss] [License-review] For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4)

[Richard Fontana]

(Moved to license-discuss)

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 5:06 PM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Is one takeaway here that people should start by ignoring the OSI process and just start using the license?

Maybe. Not ignoring, but postponing.

The handful or so of the first licenses recognized by the OSI as 'open
source' had already been in wide use for years at the time the OSI was
founded in 1998. Looking back (over a ~21 year period), I believe the
OSI may have taken the wrong path very early on by developing a
process that encouraged submission of novel, community-untested
licenses. This gave us, at various points in history, the corporate
vanity licenses, the "crayon" and bad-thought-experiment licenses, and
possibly licenses motivated largely by individual-author ego.

Maybe it would be better for OSI to have the expectation that license
review will only take place some months or years after a license is
already in practical use. Users of new licenses could be expected to
make clear that the licenses are not OSI-approved.

Richard