Chris Travers [mailto:chris.travers gmail.com] wrote:
> On 10/16/07, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschengatech.edu> wrote:
> > Chris Travers wrote:
> > > Basically "Open Source" has seen
widespread generic use which began
> > > before the founding of the OSI.
> >
> > You keep saying this without elaboration. Some
evidence would be nice,
> > since Rick has told you this is false (and has
been rehashed here
> > repeatedly).
>
> I would start with:
> http://www.opensour
ce.org/history
>
> Eric Raymond, Michael Tiemann and others started
promoting the term in
> 1998 as an alternative to the term "Free
Software." For the next
> three years, the term grew in use. Only in 2001 was
the OSI founded,
> three years later. In the mean time, the term
"Open Source" was being
> used commercially in a generic way to indicate software
whose source
> was freely available.
Not really: the commercial users did not want to use the
terms "free
software" because it was too much linked to the
definition given by the FSF,
and did not want to use the term "freeware" as
well because it did not
indicate that the software source was available, but just
that this software
was distributed in its binary form without needing to pay
any fee (but not
necessarily free to use), and not necessarily from any
distributor.
There was a need to speak about only the fact that the
source was available
to anyone asking for it (but this availability was not
without conditions,
and they were not satisfied by the reciprocal and free
distribution rules
required by the FSF licences: they did not want that anyone
becomes a
distributor, they wanted to control the distribution of this
source, by
forcing users asking for the sources to register with them
and sign some
contract). That's where "open source" developed,
initially really for
commercial reasons, and those OSI open source licences were
not concerned
(the BSD-like licences already existed before that).
It's just that OSI has attempted to define its own, more
restricted
definition of "open source" to limit the use of
the terms by commercial
organizations, and making them more compatible with the
"free software"
licences that were starting to be widespread. OSI has
attempted to approve
some non-FSF licences, that did not need the GPL-like
reciprocal requirement
so that more "liberal" terms could be accepted as
a commons ground, provided
that the set of licences between the "BSD-like"
and "GPL-like" licences form
a set of mutually *compatible* licences (compatibility
meaning here that
reusing any software in this set was forming a new packaged
covered by the
most permissive rights, and the most restrictive obligations
of each of the
component licences, in a way that remains usable).
But I don't see any need for even getting OSI compliance for
any licence. In
my opinion, any licence can be written with terms that
*assert* that they
*are* compatible with some already approved by OSI. With
such licencing
terms, the users have the choice of following the terms of
the licence
itself, or those from the other referenced licences. The
licence itself will
just assert that with a contractual force, and may specify
its own licence
termination terms (which may even be very restrictive)
without impacting the
other termination terms of any of the other licences
referenced.
Let's take an example: the French "CeCILL" licence
is compatible with the
GPL *ONLY* because it *asserts* that compatibility within
its own terms.
This is enough to make it a free licence, independently of
the terms
specific to the CeCILL licence that makes it fully compliant
for the French
law by adding rights, obligations and definitions that are
immediately
enforceable under French law without having to
"test" the GPL against a
French court. So if auser still does not like the French
legal obligations,
he can still use discard the CeCILL licence and legally
replace it with the
GPL (however the legal French obligations will remain
applicable to users
residing in France, not because of the licence itself, that
user has
terminated, but only because of law applicable to these
users).
So licences can still continue to proliferate, to add
additional rights or
restrictions: this is not a problem for us, as long as they
also provide
alternative licences that we already know and approve as
being
"free"(GPL-compatible) or "open source"
(BSDL-compatible).
So let's just propose to licence writers to include terms in
their licence,
asserting that their licence is compatible to GPL, and/or,
BSDL and/or MPL
and we are done. Their licence is immediately compatible
with US, if this
compatibility assertion fixes NO CONDITION for that
compatibility (the
licence may even force the user to choose only ONE of the
referenced
licence, without any right to mix the rights from multiple
referenced
licences, this will work for our need to have a commons
ground for reusable
softwares with sources).
So if the fact that they use "open source" terms
for describing the licence
does not matter. We are ONLY interested in the compatibility
of the licence
with our set of approved licences. And for me this is just
enough, however
IANAL...
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