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Parity pretends nothing and hides nothing. Unlike scores of OSI approved terms, its rules are plain for all to read and understand. Hackers can quote the terms

Parity pretends nothing and hides nothing. Unlike scores of OSI approved terms, its rules are plain for all to read and understand. Hackers can quote the terms in HN posts and grok them without taking anyone else's word for it. You can dismiss my points as a rant. In your position, I might be very tempted to do the same. But that is exactly why OSI is where it is right now. When every OSI critic is a heretic to be ignored, OSI becomes more and more insular by the day. The heretics come to outnumber the faithful.

JoshTriplett 7y ago
> Parity pretends nothing and hides nothing. It portrays itself as open, it talks all about being "free for open source", it uses pictures like https://licensezero.com/doors.svg https://licensezero.com/doors.svg (warning, site contains misleading misinformation), but it's intentionally misleading and equivocating, and benefits from the resulting uncertainty and lack of clarity. It's a proprietary software license that tries to convince people to let it into their ecosystem. What's more dangerous to leave around unlabeled? The poison that looks like glowing green toxic sludge and smells so bad it makes your eyes water, or the poison that looks like clean drinking water at a glance? Which one is more likely to harm the unwary and the uninformed? Parity's brand of poison might not have a label on it that explicitly says "clean water, drink me", but it's more dangerous if you're not deeply familiar with license minutiae and history. It's an attractive nuisance. > Unlike scores of OSI approved terms, its rules are plain for all to read and understand. So are the Creative Commons non-commercial and no-derivs licenses, and they're not FOSS either. > But that is exactly why OSI is where it is right now. Wildly successful in maintaining a list of licenses people can trust that describe an ever-growing amount of software, against a multitude of threats? OSI is an extremely cautious and conservative organization, as it should be. > When every OSI critic is a heretic to be ignored, Constructive criticism can be useful. Competing agendas advancing not-quite-open licenses are not. And no, not ignored, nor elevated to any position as vaunted as "heretic"; ignoring would be dangerous. FUD needs countering, and software that tries to go from FOSS to proprietary (including "proprietary but we wish you'd pretend it's open") needs forking and the original consigned to a historical curiosity and a reference for anyone thinking of doing the same. > The heretics come to outnumber the faithful. Only in their wildest dreams. The self-styled "heretics" are just loud.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  I am intimately familiar with license minutiae and history. I wrote Parity (with lots of hackers!) and License Zero. As for OSI's success, it predates any license list. AFAICT, OSI launched---and achieved media liftoff---with no more than the example license section at the end of DFSG. Only later did the org drop the examples section and start a list. Principally to provide org blessing to companies writing their own new terms for releases. Which was controversial. Meanwhile, I've yet to find a situation where I'd recommend incorporating the OSI license list into legal terms or functional policy. I've regretted advising as much in the past. And helped clients make others regret it. See: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/05/05/Rely-on-OSI.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/05/05/Rely-on-OSI.html You've left some space for constructive criticism, but only nominally. Apparently any deviation from your definition of "open" means I not only get discounted, but need to be actively opposed. But our disagreement is demonstrably narrow: if I struck one numbered item from Parity 6, I take it you might approve! As for whose views are how popular, I'd note that a few OSI reformers have called for honest opinion polling of developers. Last I checked, those polling proposals have got as far as their reform proposals: nowhere. By the by, attractive nuisance is a legal doctrine concerning risks to children. Some programmers are in fact children---I got started young---but as a whole, programmers don't need any licensing nanny. Especially if the legal terms welcomed them to read, which in my experience the CC "legal codes" do not.
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    I'm well aware of who you are and that you wrote the non-FOSS license in question, which is part of why it seemed worth the time to respond to address the misinformation. I don't have any expectation of convincing you, only of making sure nobody else mistakes your work for contributions to FOSS. When I said that Parity is "more dangerous if you're not deeply familiar with license minutiae and history", I wasn't suggesting you were unfamiliar, but rather, that you've built a trap for others. I'm also aware of the history of OSI, and in particular that it learned from early mistakes and created a narrower set of recommended licenses, and actively pushed back against further license proliferation. And yet it seems like you now want it to approve licenses again, as long as they're licenses you wrote. > You've left some space for constructive criticism, but only nominally. Apparently any deviation from your definition of "open" means I not only get discounted, but need to be actively opposed. On the contrary, there's absolutely space to improve. But not every change is an improvement. Also, it's an unpleasant rhetorical trick to attempt to marginalize the OSD as "your definition of open", as though you have an equally valid one. Constructive criticism and manufacturing confusion don't mix. Constructive criticism needs more clarity and distinction, not equivocation and imprecision. > But our disagreement is demonstrably narrow: if I struck one numbered item from Parity 6, I take it you might approve! Not even close; Parity isn't salvageable. By the time you remove enough from it that needs removing, what's left is then just a gratuitously incompatible software license. (As a side note, I can appreciate its approachable style, and if it had come about years ago or if provided a path to compatibility with existing copyleft licenses, that would be a useful property rather than a trap.) Among other things: "Contribute", clause 1, requires public publication rather than providing source to people who received a binary. "Prototypes" clause 3 requires publication of private changes, and infringes freedom zero. So does "Prototypes" clause 1. And, of course, "develop, operate, or analyze" completely breaks freedom zero. Also, from the realm of opinion rather than fatal problems: The link to an anti-copyleft organization should go, the "defense" clause should allow defensive patent usage, and "Protoypes" clause 2 adds a giant loophole ("non-production user testing") that's only mitigated by "Prototypes" clause 1 and 3.

JoshTriplett 7y ago

> Parity pretends nothing and hides nothing. It portrays itself as open, it talks all about being "free for open source", it uses pictures like https://licensezero.com/doors.svg https://licensezero.com/doors.svg (warning, site contains misleading misinformation), but it's intentionally misleading and equivocating, and benefits from the resulting uncertainty and lack of clarity. It's a proprietary software license that tries to convince people to let it into their ecosystem. What's more dangerous to leave around unlabeled? The poison that looks like glowing green toxic sludge and smells so bad it makes your eyes water, or the poison that looks like clean drinking water at a glance? Which one is more likely to harm the unwary and the uninformed? Parity's brand of poison might not have a label on it that explicitly says "clean water, drink me", but it's more dangerous if you're not deeply familiar with license minutiae and history. It's an attractive nuisance. > Unlike scores of OSI approved terms, its rules are plain for all to read and understand. So are the Creative Commons non-commercial and no-derivs licenses, and they're not FOSS either. > But that is exactly why OSI is where it is right now. Wildly successful in maintaining a list of licenses people can trust that describe an ever-growing amount of software, against a multitude of threats? OSI is an extremely cautious and conservative organization, as it should be. > When every OSI critic is a heretic to be ignored, Constructive criticism can be useful. Competing agendas advancing not-quite-open licenses are not. And no, not ignored, nor elevated to any position as vaunted as "heretic"; ignoring would be dangerous. FUD needs countering, and software that tries to go from FOSS to proprietary (including "proprietary but we wish you'd pretend it's open") needs forking and the original consigned to a historical curiosity and a reference for anyone thinking of doing the same. > The heretics come to outnumber the faithful. Only in their wildest dreams. The self-styled "heretics" are just loud.

kemitchell 7y ago
I am intimately familiar with license minutiae and history. I wrote Parity (with lots of hackers!) and License Zero. As for OSI's success, it predates any license list. AFAICT, OSI launched---and achieved media liftoff---with no more than the example license section at the end of DFSG. Only later did the org drop the examples section and start a list. Principally to provide org blessing to companies writing their own new terms for releases. Which was controversial. Meanwhile, I've yet to find a situation where I'd recommend incorporating the OSI license list into legal terms or functional policy. I've regretted advising as much in the past. And helped clients make others regret it. See: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/05/05/Rely-on-OSI.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/05/05/Rely-on-OSI.html You've left some space for constructive criticism, but only nominally. Apparently any deviation from your definition of "open" means I not only get discounted, but need to be actively opposed. But our disagreement is demonstrably narrow: if I struck one numbered item from Parity 6, I take it you might approve! As for whose views are how popular, I'd note that a few OSI reformers have called for honest opinion polling of developers. Last I checked, those polling proposals have got as far as their reform proposals: nowhere. By the by, attractive nuisance is a legal doctrine concerning risks to children. Some programmers are in fact children---I got started young---but as a whole, programmers don't need any licensing nanny. Especially if the legal terms welcomed them to read, which in my experience the CC "legal codes" do not.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  I'm well aware of who you are and that you wrote the non-FOSS license in question, which is part of why it seemed worth the time to respond to address the misinformation. I don't have any expectation of convincing you, only of making sure nobody else mistakes your work for contributions to FOSS. When I said that Parity is "more dangerous if you're not deeply familiar with license minutiae and history", I wasn't suggesting you were unfamiliar, but rather, that you've built a trap for others. I'm also aware of the history of OSI, and in particular that it learned from early mistakes and created a narrower set of recommended licenses, and actively pushed back against further license proliferation. And yet it seems like you now want it to approve licenses again, as long as they're licenses you wrote. > You've left some space for constructive criticism, but only nominally. Apparently any deviation from your definition of "open" means I not only get discounted, but need to be actively opposed. On the contrary, there's absolutely space to improve. But not every change is an improvement. Also, it's an unpleasant rhetorical trick to attempt to marginalize the OSD as "your definition of open", as though you have an equally valid one. Constructive criticism and manufacturing confusion don't mix. Constructive criticism needs more clarity and distinction, not equivocation and imprecision. > But our disagreement is demonstrably narrow: if I struck one numbered item from Parity 6, I take it you might approve! Not even close; Parity isn't salvageable. By the time you remove enough from it that needs removing, what's left is then just a gratuitously incompatible software license. (As a side note, I can appreciate its approachable style, and if it had come about years ago or if provided a path to compatibility with existing copyleft licenses, that would be a useful property rather than a trap.) Among other things: "Contribute", clause 1, requires public publication rather than providing source to people who received a binary. "Prototypes" clause 3 requires publication of private changes, and infringes freedom zero. So does "Prototypes" clause 1. And, of course, "develop, operate, or analyze" completely breaks freedom zero. Also, from the realm of opinion rather than fatal problems: The link to an anti-copyleft organization should go, the "defense" clause should allow defensive patent usage, and "Protoypes" clause 2 adds a giant loophole ("non-production user testing") that's only mitigated by "Prototypes" clause 1 and 3.