Quoting John Cowan (co...@ccil.org): > That is true, but not yet applicable. So far we have only seen a request > to discuss the idea, and we have discussed it. No request to draft a > license has been forthcoming.
The commonality lies in spending everyone's time on what, in my opinion, and that of most regulars who've weighed in, is a particularly bad idea. The fact that Eric hasn't _technically_ been drafting licence text distracts from the point that license-discuss time/effort is better not expended on bad ideas. (Obviously, some others starting with Eric himself would dispute my assertion of it being a bad idea. I gladly acknowledge this, just in anyone is unclear.) Also, FWIW, I think the distinction about him not yet drafting a licence is just a bit questionable. He's discussed particular wording for a Persona non Grata Preamble (not 'Prelude' as I stated upthread, sorry). At that point, I would suggest we're talking licence wording, even if carefully constrained to a NO-OP Preamble prepended solely to make an ideological point. (The point is valid that some GNU invariant texts are considerable annoyances, but we don't have to encourage and help more such things.) > Very simply, people who have strong emotions about these companies are > usually against them, whereas people have strong emotions both for and > against RMS. Using him as an example would just invite even more > Sturm und Drang. My point about that was two-fold. My larger point is that Richard Stallman, against whom Eric and some other signatories speaking for LibrePlanet have a very public and very recent grudge, seems like an excellent advance indicator of the typical uses to which a Persona non Grata Preamble would be put, in practice. We would expect others to quickly follow following that model, not so much the Exxon-Mobils and ex-Monsanto Bayers of this world than the -- oh, I'm not sure who else would be a recent target of two-minutes hates -- Jörg Schilling, maybe, or was that all over by the late 2000s? Anyway, the names would accumulate, gathering dust and reading like the typically grubby and increasingly antique peeves they mostly would be, I predict, no matter how prettied-up some were as merely required to make a project more 'safe and inclusive'.[1] My smaller point is that I am disappointed Eric didn't disclose, while making his proposal for a way to 'discourage and shame morally corrupt users', that he'd recently spearheaded a major public anti-Stallman effort for LibrePlanet, but that this inquiry is different and has nothing to do with that. Had I been in Eric's shoes, I'd have said so to avert criticism in advance, in the knowledge that the first thing attentive readers would do is look up one's recent writings to look for signs of conflict of interest or hidden agendas. If Eric now wishes to say this was not in any way part of his agenda, fine, but it's curious he didn't anticipate that suspicion. [1] At some risk of retribution from the gods of irony, I think I'll advise Eric here about one additional serious problem (among many) in his Persona non Grata Preamble proposal. His text included: These organizations and their employees are not welcome to participate in PROJECT_NAME community. We intend to reject any issue submissions, pull requests and support requests.... Over time, the primacy in any open source code of the right to fork is going to make the above text look extremely clueless. Let's say Org A compiles a no-goodniks list with finger-wagging text such as is quoted above. Two years later, there's a fork, Org B manages the dominant fork, and Org A dissolves. Three years further on, it's Org C. Yet, the Persona non Grata Preamble for the covered code still proclaims to all comers that no-longer-extant Org A, may its memory be for a blessing, is firmly devoted to extending a non-welcome mat to a certain list of evil people. This effect would be amusing if the comedy were not inadvertent. Basically, Eric's conception assumes One True Management speaks for a codebase. Which is exactly what open source avoids. -- Cheers, "I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; Rick Moen I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." r...@linuxmafia.com -- A. Whitney Brown McQ! (4x80) _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@lists.opensource.org http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
