Just realized that my snip of the first quote from Richard in my previous e-mail had removed the first sentence, where Richard very clearly said "I guess I don't either," making it clear that the rest of the paragraph was something of a philosophical reflection about the list. It's also obviously not a statement from the OSI board, etc.,
My general questions about philosophy, goals, and mission are the same - as echoed in Luis' original message - but I did want to make the above clear for anyone that finds this thread in the archives later. Full original quote below: On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 10:38 PM Richard Fontana <rfont...@redhat.com> wrote: > On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 4:56 PM Luis Villa <l...@lu.is> wrote: > > > Saying "OSI's list isn't very useful in contracts or scanners" does > carry an implicit question that I've probably also said explicitly on > occasion: if people don't, by and large, refer exactly to the OSI list in > their documents and scanners, then what is it for? Who is the audience? > What will they use the list for? I don't actually have good answers to this > question, so I'm not sure how OSI should answer it. > > I guess I don't either. To me, the approval process is (at least > potentially) more important than the list itself. Through the analysis > and critique and approval or rejection of submitted licenses, what > we/the community means by "open source" (or "free software") becomes > clearer. It's an act of self-definition. It's useful to me, because I > work *within* open source, as I and others see it, and I need to > understand the appropriate boundary between open source and non-open > source for what I do to make sense. This suggests that the submitted > licenses are mostly not themselves all that important, rather they > serve as excuses to engage in some interesting philosophical > deliberations over what open source actually is. (Maybe to the > annoyance of a lot of license submitters.) However, occasionally a > submitted license *is* important because it's being submitted by an > influential person or entity, > > I recognize (and have in the past called attention to) the obvious > problem with all this, that of relying on self-appointed authority > figures to determine community standards. This is also why for all > its faults the OSI license-review list is commendable, because in no > other case is there a meaningful opportunity for *anyone* to > participate in this policymaking exercise. The alternative is to rely > on less transparent authorities (FSF, Debian, I guess Fedora should > also be included here) or to express one's views in some isolated and > less effectual manner. At least the existence of the OSI and its > approved licenses helps avoid a situation of total chaos where no one > agrees on what open source / free software means, or where the > definition gets significantly watered down. > > > But it does seem likely that OSI should strive to have some lists whose > goal is explicitly about utility. (This does not imply that OSI should > abandon the current OSD; one can imagine many lists that are more useful > and still contain only OSD-compliant licenses. But one can also imagine > that an effort to create those lists might helpfully serve to help refine > the edge cases of what the OSD means in 2019 - perhaps either knocking > things off of, or adding to, the "main" list.) > > > > Answering this question of utility is what drove the Blue Oak list. It > is not a challenge to OSI's authority, simply an actually useful thing that > I can refer to in contracts and scanner policies, which I (and my > clients/customers) need but OSI does not provide. We'll continue to evolve > the list with that goal of utility in mind. (For example, we've had several > people say they can't use it until the groupings/labels are more > informative/less vague. If the list isn't pragmatically useful, it isn't > fulfilling its purpose, so we'll probably make them more informative.) If > OSI obsoleted this effort by providing a deliberately useful list of > permissive licenses I'd be thrilled. > > I guess it hadn't occurred to me that for some the main purpose of > these kinds of supposedly authoritative license lists might be use for > contracts and scanning tools (since for me those are not really > interesting or useful ways of making use of such lists). A more > comprehensive list (like the Fedora list) can be useful if one is > actually trying to create an open source product or distribution -- at > least if one cares about accuracy and integrity in description of > software as "open source". I think there may be a lot of people who > aren't familiar with what's specifically on the OSI approved list and > assume it is similarly comprehensive, or assume that open source > software (that is, software generally and non-controversially > considered to be open source) is composed from a license standpoint > only from licenses in the OSI list. > > Richard > > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > License-discuss@lists.opensource.org > > http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org >
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