On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Russell Nelson wrote:
On 3/18/20 10:27 AM, Tobie Langel wrote:
If the goal is to deter the conversation from happening here, it’s
quite effective. If it’s not, please be aware that this is what if
feels like to those that are on the receiving end of this.
Yes! The goal is to deter the conversation, because there is no common
ground between Ethical Software (If I don't like you, you can't use my
software) and Open Source (even if I don't like you, you can use my
software). There is nothing to discuss. Why is that not obvious to
everyone? Please, go away, and promote Ethical Software on its own
merits.
I object to this, and want to make sure no one confuses Russ (even granted
his long presence here) for being the last word or authoritative on this.
The two candidates for the OSI board who have raised this as a topic,
Caroline and Tobie, are long time contributors to and leaders in various
open source projects and communities. They are not invaders from a foreign
land nor are they interlopers hoping to free ride off of the positive
reputation of the Open Source trademark.
That is more than can be said for many of the companies who participated
in the "open core" discussions ten years ago, who regardless we engaged in
good faith. Even though those folks went and did their own license, I feel
it was that constructive engagement that helped win the public argument
for our side, and sharpened our own community's implicit understanding
that multi-vendor open source communities are the most resilient form.
Any long term community or institution unwilling to occasionally
reconsider any of its core principles is one doomed to eventual
irrelevance. The U.S. Constitution has been successfully amended 27 times,
with the first ten of them (the Bill of Rights) happening only 2 years
after, the most recent one ratified in 1992 (203 years after first being
proposed! now that must have been an epic thread.)
License-discuss is clearly not the appropriate venue for discussion of
amending the OSD. But if a good faith effort arises to review a license
that is both OSD-conformant (even if repellant to many) and conformant
with someone else's definition of "ethical", they are due consideration.
I think there are big issues with every work product I've seen from the
Ethical Source efforts, and agree with Gil's concerns about their
approach. But I object to the notion that discussions here are off-limits
merely because a substantial part of the community may be turned off from
them. That was never a criteria for consideration of the AGPL or other
licenses for which mass adoption by the old guard was never a priority.
Brian
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