[License-discuss] OSI definition

[Mat K. Witts]

On 22/01/2021 00:29, McCoy Smith wrote:
> A corporation is a group of natural persons.

Not on it's own, (your second assertion diminishes this). Presumably,
you are wanting to mean 'shareholders', or possibly you want to also
include a combination of 'directors' or maybe 'employees or 'customers'?
So, you are implying this license discriminates against one or all of
these 'groups of people'?

Lets' test this out. Is there anything in this license that disallows
any of these human beings (or 'natural persons' if you like) using work
applied to this license either as individuals or as any of these groups?

Answer: No

This license could not be used for a powerpoint presentation of an
interim report by directors of a giant company at an AGM, or as PDF to
meet it's filing requirements at the stock exchange or tax authority
(but only because these cases are typical of official company use - and
not a field of endevor), but the same exact documents could be used in
exactly the same way (that is: as a powerpoint presentation or pdf file)
between one or more directors and a small executive recruitment agency,
or waved about in a discussion by the water cooler between employees
worried about their jobs, or in a trade union meeting calling for pay
increases, or by a small print media outlet reporting on the company or
at an investment club... and so on and so forth.

Hopefully this example illustrates how no group of persons nor field of
endeavor is being disadvantaged.

> And a legal person

This assertion makes the previous assertion less persuasive, not more
so. It shows that a limited liability company has a separate legal
personality, which of course at the same time seriously undermines the
idea that a company is a group of human beings. The rationale for
incorporation is of course is just this, to create a legal entity
SEPARATE from the groups implied by your first assertion.