[License-review] AGPL timeline & why cautious processes with real-world testing are better (was Re: For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4))

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Van, I appreciate that you acknowledge you had some details wrong about AGPL.
However, you seemed to have missed that I also gave the example of
copyleft-next, for which none of your recent arguments are relevant, because
copyleft-next's drafting authority is neither FSF nor OSI.

Anyway, parts of your point actually support mine: your recent email
indicates that you and your client very much want the amazingly valuable
commodity that OSI controls: permission to call your work an "OSI approved
license" .  In fact, you seem to argue that you need such an endorsement from
either OSI or FSF to succeed.  Yet, I don't really find the "you have to
endorse this license because it won't be successful otherwise" as a
compelling argument for why the OSI should approve a new, unused license on
the timeline the drafting authority dictates.  OSI's primary mandate is
deciding whether a license is good for OSI's charitable mission.
Furthermore, I believe that the OSI *should* be suspicious of a for-profit
license drafting authority who seems in a hurry to expedite approval for
complicated, new and untested copyleft policies.  Indeed, if someone
submitted copyleft-next for OSI approval right now, I'd say the same thing,
and most of the new ideas in copyleft-next are 4-6 years old at this point.

Van, IMO, your copyleft licensing ideas are creative and worthy of
consideration, study, and even worthy of testing in the real world.  Whether
these ideas will curtail or extend software freedom is an open question that
no one can answer in the hypothetical.  OSI should wait to see how the
license impacts its users before concluding -- just as OSI has done with most
novel copyleft licenses before it.

> Is this the vision of success that the OSI wants to encourage?

My view, as an outside observer, is OSI's primary job is the Supreme Court of
deciding whether or not a license is really Open Source license.  There is no
effective way to appeal a decision of OSI to de-approve a license, so once
it's declared "OSI approved", it's likely that way forever.  Thus, OSI's
rulings are *even more permanent* than a Supreme Court decision.  There's a
reason it takes years for a case to reach a Supreme Court, and why SCOTUS
often denies cert on cases we all wish they'd consider.  OSI would be wise to
follow a Supreme-Court-style model in license review.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him

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