License Committee Report for September 2008

[Bruce Perens]

> Wang Donglin writes:
>  > Do you know this kind of rule(Open Source Definition) will prevent
>  > potential contributer like us to participate the open source
>  > community?
That is necessary. If we encouraged everybody who had a problem with the 
rules to call their software "Open Source", then "Open Source" would not 
mean anything.

You are welcome to use the license you have already submitted any way 
you like, but please don't call it Open Source. "Disclosed source" is a 
good name.

But I think it would be much better to remove the problem requirement 
from your license, because besides not being Open Source, it hinders the 
acceptance of UOML as an Open Standard. Real Open Standards allow 
extensions and development. They /may/ place a disclosure requirement on 
those extensions, so that we don't get embrace-extend-extinguish 
behavior as with Microsoft, but it is wrong to prohibit extensions 
because that places a barrier in the way of progress.

    Thanks

    Bruce