[License-review] Approval request for ZENTAO PUBLIC LICENSE

Matthias Merkel moritz30 at moritz30.de
Fri Jun 24 04:06:53 UTC 2016


As said before: This makes the situation a completely defferent one. I'm not sure but maybe even legacy approval would be appropriate what would be easier for your license but I can't say that. Maybe Richard can help us there.

---- On Fr, 24 Jun 2016 04:50:52 +0200 feiteng854 at gmail.com wrote ----

We are glad to hear different voice from this community, which will make us think more about our license.

As mentioned earlier, there are hundreds of thousands users who benefit from using our products to manage their work every day. If this is the so-call "disservice", it only firms our belief to continue serving our users.

We would like to abide by rules, but we value things that are beneficial to others more.

On Thursday, June 23, 2016, Carlo Piana <carlo at piana.eu> wrote:
To clarify things better, my views are not necessarily those of OSI, of which I am not an affiliate [0].

This is a public discussion list, where anybody who has something       worth to say, can speak up. It's a public discussion where, like in any scientific fora, the ideas of the people are as valuable as they are well grounded in the accepted principles. This is why licenses are put to test before *the Board* decides. The tougher the scrutiny, the more reliable the evaluation.

I have myself submitted to this process and miserably failed. I have ever since participated to the discussion trying to bring my small bucket of water. Others have tried and succeeded. Others have also failed. Everybody, though, accepted to withstand being stressed by everybody who felt to have a say.

Just a final remark. In the field, "Open source" is a term of the trade. Not written in any law (heaven forbid!) but generally recognised as residing within the Open Source Definition. I don't often use that term myself, but when I use it, I use only for OSD-compliant licensed software. If one uses the term for non-compliant licenses, she does a disservice to open source and her customers, and I submit is not operating on fair trade terms.

Again, my view, which is worth what it is worth.

All the best,

Carlo

[0] Nor do they represent the views of other relevant subject to which I *am* affiliated


On 23/06/2016 15:08, Fei Teng wrote:
Thanks for sharing your point of view.

ZPL has been applied in three of our products and approved by hundreds of thousands users of ours. It has made our team to be able to keep updating our software and other developers to benefit from our open source software.

With the spirit of sharing and respect to OSI, we submitted our request for approval. But apparently, there is a huge divergence between you who has dozens of years experience         dealing with open source and us. It might seems to you that what we are doing is not open source, which is OK to us, because we are more practical and value our users' approval.

Thank you all for your time and advice.


On Thursday, June 23, 2016, Carlo Piana <osi-review at piana.eu> wrote:
Open source spirit and open source law are the same.

The spirit lies in licenses that abide by the principles. If we relaxed the principles, the spirit would go. Nothing is absolute, and a rule of reason can be applied. But there are limits, like field-of-endeavour limitations, which is a no-no. A piece of software whose source code cannot be used in certain fields or in certain combinations, is not open enough. It's not a bad thing, but it's not open source and cannot receive approval.

Therefore, to obtain the badge of being open source, the license shall adapt to the rules, not the rules to the license, for practical reasons. Had we (collectively) acted for practical reasons some 20 or 25 (alas, actually more than 30!) years ago, open source would not exist now. Most of people who knew what was workable taught us that open source was a garage developers' toy, if not a cancer. 

My opinion. Others might feel different.

All the best 

Carlo


On 23/06/2016 08:45, Fei Teng wrote:
As time goes by, everything is changing and changed. Different situation requires               different license. Changes might happen to badgeware license in the future.

In China, a lot of developers who love open source                 eventually stopped updating their software because of other developers' violation of the common rules and disrespect the open source spirit.  If this keeps happening, it is harmful to the whip open source community.  

Is it to follow all the old rules which is detrimental to open source spirit more important? Or to take actions to protect open source spirit more important?




On Wednesday, June 22, 2016, Josh berkus <josh at postgresql.org> wrote:
On 06/20/2016 08:29 PM, Fei Teng wrote:
> 3. A lot of end users removed the badge of our product
> 4. A lot of developers who develop based on our product removed the
> badge of our product and they do NOT share their code with us

I thought we weren't approving any badgeware licenses?  If that's the
case, why are we still talking to Fei Teng?

--Josh Berkus
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