Alas the OSI has been highly unresponsive and even hostile to the needs of the 
GOSS community.

We go around and around where GOSS lawyers state “we need X for compliance” and 
the response is “no you don’t, just use Apache”.

Even something as simple as CC0 can’t pass muster.

I agree with Larry...we should be allowing new license terms that meet current 
201x community needs if it passes the OSD and not just block every attempt to 
change.  The community can decide to adopt the license or not.

While “badgeware” might be a little annoying, agencies spend a significant 
amount on software and while it is arguable that it should be open source it 
isn’t unreasonable for agencies to insist that it’s clearly labeled as GOSS to 
be able to get future funding for similar efforts and developers and agencies 
get credit for that work.

This is critically important for projects intended to be reused because while 
its a sometimes easy to get the initial GOSS public release done, fighting for 
continued funding for sustainment is a yearly battle.  GOSS projects are 
typically underfunded and community contributions are limited even when the 
product is being used.  Just being able to fund technical and community 
organization is difficult much less new development.

From: Stephen Michael Kellat <smkel...@yahoo.com<mailto:smkel...@yahoo.com>>
Date: Tuesday, Dec 04, 2018, 8:24 PM
To: license-discuss@lists.opensource.org 
<license-discuss@lists.opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss@lists.opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Open source license with obligation to display 
an attribution?

On Tue, Dec 04, 2018 at 07:53:17PM +0000, simon....@csiro.au wrote:
> [Apologies - I subscribed in digest mode so my response to your initial 
> comments was not threaded, and this won't be either - fixed now.]
>
>
> I guess what we are after is what you have referred to as a 'gesture'. 
> Probably shouldn't have used the term 'obligation' in the subject line - I've 
> been looking at the ODRL model, so am used to thinking in terms of 
> permissions/restrictions/obligations.
>
>
> I'm fully aware that - as with pretty much all IP law - enforcement is up to 
> us, so there is always a scalability challenge.  But mention within a license 
> at least provides a starting point. In my initial post it appeared that I was 
> jumping to a solution prior to laying out the requirement, so I attempted to 
> clarify the use-case in a follow-up message.
>
>
> What would make our bosses happy (and thus willing to continue to support our 
> contributions) would be: where a site uses our product as the primary basis 
> for a publicly-available service, that a gesture of acknowledgment is 
> publicly-visible. In non-legal English something like "if you use this 
> software as the primary basis for a service with a publicly visible UI, even 
> if under a new skin, whatever, then please acknowledge us on or around your 
> landing page. Our preference would be that you display [this logo] with a 
> link to [our webpage]".
>
> A standard-ish formulation would be nice.
>
> Simon J D Cox
> Research Scientist
> Land and 
> Water<http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/Flagships/Land-and-Water>
> CSIRO

Since I am a fellow bureaucrat but for a different nation's federal government, 
I may suggest in blunter language my view of what Mr. Cox is suggesting.

A concern with any government agency is ensuring that funding streams remain 
intact.  My employing bureau in the US Treasury is stuck under interim funding 
as the Congress continues to fail to pass full year appropriations.  That leads 
to the absurdity that the sharp, pointy end of the spear has full legal 
appropriations to spend money while the actual tax collectors could wind up 
working without pay if something goes haywire in our specific legislation.

Having open source output is a great thing for any organization.  It can be 
difficult to quantify in a more tangible form when you are facing legislators 
and ranking agency officials who are considering your budget.  Badgeware would 
conceptually be a way for agency middle management to try to appease the 
political layer to better show what the results of all the spending happen to 
be.  I'm not saying it is a good idea but it is a normal bureaucratic response.

In this particular instance, since CSIRO is the Commonwealth Scientific and 
Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, consideration on-list would be 
best if we looked at examples from the DoD and NASA.  CSIRO is a government 
agency that does good things.  I learned about them when I was in-region 
attached to the American Samoa Community College under the government of the 
Territory of American Samoa.

Mr. Cox can confirm if this is a better restatement of the problem.

Stephen Michael Kellat
Ashtabula, Ohio

Standard Disclaimer: 
http://skellat.freeshell.org/blog/pages/about-this-blog.html




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