[License-discuss] What should fit in a FOSS license?

Pamela Chestek pamela.chestek at opensource.org
Wed Mar 11 20:37:09 UTC 2020


Can we avoid defining viewpoints by stereotyping? I daresay there are
many people over and under 40 in both the woke and unwoke categories.
Perhaps we can define the category by the belief, not by the assumed age
of the member.

Thanks,
Pam

Pamela Chestek
Chair, License Review Committee
Open Source Initiative

On 3/11/2020 4:30 PM, Russell McOrmond wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 3:34 PM Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org
> <mailto:josh at berkus.org>> wrote:
>
>     But I'm talking about going beyond that -- using the Vaccine
>     License to
>     explain why we have OSD 5 in the first place, because devs under 40 do
>     not believe in the OSD.  It needs to be explained. Stay tuned.
>
>
> I think we have recently seen examples of devs over 40 who don't
> understand the reasons behind the OSD, whether from a political/rights
> perspective or a more practical software engineering/adoption
> perspective.  I don't think this is strictly a matter of age.
>
>
> Understanding the history of the problems Free Software and then later
> Open Source were created to try to solve, and the compromises that
> already happened, are critical for understanding what types of changes
> will be acceptable and what is going to be recognised as in opposition.
>
> It was already a compromise for those of us who were involved in Free
> Software movement for human rights/freedoms (freedom from excessive
> control by software copyright owners, and later software patent owners
> when that harmful concept was invented) reasons were sceptical of the
> more politics-neutral "Open Source" language.  There was a need to
> explain to us why nothing of the underlying freedom goals was lost in
> the adoption of the marketing term "Open Source" to describe
> essentially the same thing in a much more business/success friendly
> manner.  The licenses would be the same, with the criteria for Open
> Source being based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), even
> if the organisations created to manage the important brands (FSF and
> OSI) might be a different stages of approval processes.
>
>
>
> I became a convert -- until recently I became sceptical again as
> people started talking about "being a little bit more open" as being a
> relevant goal of Open Source.   If Open Source becomes something
> entirely different than Free Software, and the rights/freedom public
> policy goals are lost, then we'll splinter into those different camps
> and I believe that success for anyone will go out the door.
>
> -- 
> Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
>
> "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
> manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or
> portable media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
>
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