[License-review] Fwd: [Non-DoD Source] Resolution on NOSA 2.0

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

Bruce,

There was no reply on license review because you didn’t send it to either license review or Bryan.

http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2017-December/thread.html

It’s been over FOUR YEARS since NOSA 2.0 was submitted in June of 2013.  Maybe you should have asked these questions in 2013 rather than 2017?

In any case, according to the archive of the license-review lists from November 2017 to February 2018, NASA was ignored.  If the board has formally rejected the NOSA 2.0 submission in the meantime that’s just awesome communication on the lists.

By blocking the approval of NOSA 2.0 the OSI has blocked the fix for the section that you have an issue with in v1.3 (original work of authorship clause).  If you were interested in seeing that language removed then you should have advocated for approval of NOSA 2.0.

As I noted in License-Discuss, if one the agencies that has been forward thinking and generating GOSS code for public use as part of their strategy for nearly two decades under the NOSA license (https://open.nasa.gov and https://code.nasa.gov ) and likely has released one of the oldest GOSS/PD codebases around (https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11) believes it needs to update that license then the OSI shouldn’t continue to be a roadblock for improving that already approved special purpose license but instead be helpful and responsive.

According to Open Nasa they have:


  *   39,054 Open Data Sets
  *   356 Open Code Repositories (155 on GitHub under the NASA account)
  *   41 Open APIs

I think NASA has met and exceeded any “higher standard” set for Open Source and Open Data advocacy and performance.

Regards,

Nigel


On 2/16/18, 4:38 PM, "License-review on behalf of Bruce Perens" <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org<mailto:license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> on behalf of bruce at perens.com<mailto:bruce at perens.com>> wrote:

I did not get any reply from NASA when I first sent this, in early December.
    Thanks
    Bruce

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com<mailto:bruce at perens.com>>
Date: Fri, Dec 8, 2017, 21:39
Subject: Re: [License-review] [Non-DoD Source] Resolution on NOSA 2.0
To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at opensource.org<mailto:license-review at opensource.org>>, <cem.f.karan.civ at mail.mil<mailto:cem.f.karan.civ at mail.mil>>, <bryan.a.geurts at nasa.gov<mailto:bryan.a.geurts at nasa.gov>>

> Could you (meaning you and the board) please give us a breakdown of what the issues were?
and

> If we resubmit, will we be engaged or simply ignored, as before?
I didn't see any public response to these questions. I am not a member of the OSI board, but I am the creator of the Open Source Definition. As a member of the license review committee (admission being equivalent to being granted a subscription to this mailing list) I would be willing to look at a new submission and make a recommendation.

I think the missing piece in your previous submissions is that they were not a good deal for the Open Source developer community, only a license engineered to grant maximal protection to NASA. The board cited legal ambiguities in their response, these are of course to the disadvantage of the community. Individual developers do not have the easy access to counsel and the legal budget that NASA has, and it's an even worse day for them when they are sued. To give a personal example, my recent participation in an Open-source-related lawsuit will probably exceed my year's income in legal fees. So, I believe that both NASA and OSI should place the individual developer's protection before that of NASA if we are all to pursue Open Source fairly.

In addition, the language in 1.3 that prevents combination of Open Source that is not an original work of authorship of the contributor seems to me to be inimical to the concept of Open Source. I would not have recommended its approval. I would be especially interested in seeing a submission that removed that language.

    Thanks

    Bruce
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