* Jim Jagielski: > Just say that, for example, we were having this discussion 10 years > ago, and that the elephant in the room, as persona-non-grata was > Microsoft. And say that there was s/w that was under such an ethical > license that prevented or severely restricted Microsoft from using > it (or leveraging it), either from a legal or a social > standpoint... My conclusion is that we would not today be seeing > Microsoft and being as much in the FOSS camp as they are now. In > effect, we would have actively prevented a persona-non-grata from > becoming a persona-grata (is that even a thing?).
Well, if we want to talk concrete examples: Microsoft had a subsidiary, Microsoft Open Technologies, to keep some distance from licenses they deemed problematic at the time. Presumably, as a corporation, they could have used a similar construct to avoid any public shaming requirement in software licenses. Non-commercial, non-legal entities would have it much harder. I do think we still have an amazing level of horizontal hostility among open-source communities. Licensing has always been a tool in these conflicts. Persona-non-granta licenses, if widely accepted, would allow to escalate conflicts even further. _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@lists.opensource.org http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
