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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 lice

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.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  I obviously think highly of my own licenses. But I also think "open source" should embrace CAL, SSPL, and 996, which I had no hand in. I think it's safe to say CAL wouldn't have gone anywhere with the OSI to which I proposed L0-R. But I no longer really care whether OSI approves terms or not. I don't care if it approves Blue Oak or not. I mentioned personal definitions of open source not to separate your views from OSD of DFSG or What Is Free Software? but to recognize that views of what those highly generalized, nontechnical, post hoc political documents mean in practice varies widely between individuals. There is no single, canonical, workable reading of OSD that follows necessarily from its text. The best candidates for that kind of reading exclude copyleft as we know it, which OSI saw in feedback from very early days. It's not a question of validity in any technical sense, but of mindshare. If by "anti-copyleft organization" you mean Blue Oak, see https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft https://blueoakcouncil.org/company-policy https://blueoakcouncil.org/company-policy https://blueoakcouncil.org/starter-policy https://blueoakcouncil.org/starter-policy Nobody here is your enemy. As far as I'm aware, nobody's conscious intentions are anything but pure.

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.

kemitchell 7y ago
I obviously think highly of my own licenses. But I also think "open source" should embrace CAL, SSPL, and 996, which I had no hand in. I think it's safe to say CAL wouldn't have gone anywhere with the OSI to which I proposed L0-R. But I no longer really care whether OSI approves terms or not. I don't care if it approves Blue Oak or not. I mentioned personal definitions of open source not to separate your views from OSD of DFSG or What Is Free Software? but to recognize that views of what those highly generalized, nontechnical, post hoc political documents mean in practice varies widely between individuals. There is no single, canonical, workable reading of OSD that follows necessarily from its text. The best candidates for that kind of reading exclude copyleft as we know it, which OSI saw in feedback from very early days. It's not a question of validity in any technical sense, but of mindshare. If by "anti-copyleft organization" you mean Blue Oak, see https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft https://blueoakcouncil.org/company-policy https://blueoakcouncil.org/company-policy https://blueoakcouncil.org/starter-policy https://blueoakcouncil.org/starter-policy Nobody here is your enemy. As far as I'm aware, nobody's conscious intentions are anything but pure.