Re: BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

Chris Travers scripsit:

> Does the OSI have any sort of trademark rights to the
term "open
> source?"  

No, definitively.  No such trademark exists.

> So the alternative in your mind is to certify every
reasonable BSDL
> variant individually?  Or do we insist on PostgreSQL
not being "Open
> Source?"

The former, I think.  Yes, it's annoying; the alternative is
still more
annoying.  We can't legally protect the term "open
source", but we can
in turn make life annoying for people who misuse it.

-- 
"The serene chaos that is Courage, and the phenomenon  
cowanccil.org
of Unopened Consciousness have been known to the        John
Cowan
Great World eons longer than Extaboulism."
"Why is that?" the woman inquired.
"Because I just made that word up", the Master
said wisely.
        --Kehlog Albran, The Profit             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

On 10/16/07, John Cowan <cowanccil.org> wrote:

> > So the alternative in your mind is to certify
every reasonable BSDL
> > variant individually?  Or do we insist on
PostgreSQL not being "Open
> > Source?"
>
> The former, I think.  Yes, it's annoying; the
alternative is still more
> annoying.  We can't legally protect the term "open
source", but we can
> in turn make life annoying for people who misuse it.

Ok, then just to be clear.  This really pressures vendors
such as my
business to submit any BSD-style license we want to
advertise as open
source.  At the point when we start using ICU for number to
text
conversions, we will need to submit that license.  If we
release
something that depends on X.org, then we get to submit that
license
(MIT license with the word "sublicense" removed),
and so forth.

I don't have a problem with that.  I am quite happy to do
this (and
contrary to Zac's comments, these are limited to projects
promoted by
my business-- I understand how he got the impression that I
was just
trying to be disruptive, but he is incorrect.  I do have
legitimate
reasons for these submissions).

It still seems wise to wait to proceed with the request for
approving
the PostgreSQL license until after the OSI board decides on
what they
want to do about this issue.  Since I am not on the board,
these
issues of ground rules are not my decision.

It seems to me that this really boils down the the tension
between
wanting to defend the term "open source" as if it
were worthy of
brand-name protection and the desire to prevent massive
proliferation
of licenses.  This is a serious problem which does not have
any real
solution.  At best we can manage this tension.

THis brings me to the next point:
If we go with individual approval, then we need to decide
how to
manage the license proliferation issue.  I see three
options:
1)  Proceed with single license listings.  This will cause
massive
issues in finding appropriate license information.
2)  Go with the theme-and-variations approach I mentioned
earlier.
Have a separate track for approving minor wording changes,
and list
them in the parent licenses listing.  For example, the LGPL
could be
approved as a variation on the GNU GPL.  The one caveat I
would
suggest here is that variations should not cross license
class
boundaries (Permissive vs copyleft).  So the AFL and OSL
would be
separate licenses regardless of how few words changed
between the
licenses.
3)  Approve a license class (Mr Tiemann calls this a
"cohort") and
then allow minimal discussion over what licenses are listed
as members
of that class.  It would seem to me that future versions of
the AFL
could be approved as a cohort member, and so it is quite
possible to
run into all sorts of politics over when to approve a
full-fledged
license.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers