On 12/13/22 22:48, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Brad and the OSI have ONLY the authority to determine whether licenses
satisfy the Open Source Definition AND NOTHING MORE.
Yesbut. We are also the representatives of the idea of Open Source to
the community. As such, we have a responsibility to promote the
creation, promulgation, distribution, and use of Open Source software.
Taking that into account, are we well or poorly served by having a
proliferation of slightly different licenses?
That's not a new discussion. Not new at all. But since your point is in
fact true, what can we do about license proliferation?
Not nothing, I claim. Here are my somethings:
1. We can merge the entire class of BSD licenses into a parameterized
BSD license. So instead of a "BSD" license, we have a "BSD-2,3"
license, and instead of a "MIT" license, we have a "BSD-1,3"
license, and we replace the approval listing for those two to point
to the parameterized license. That will help people to see the
differences between BSD-class licenses.
2. We can go through all the licenses to see how many are actually
being used in new software, and deprecate ( "do not use in new
software" ) any licenses which are not being used for new software.
3. If there are some lightly used licenses and if the license permits
it, fork all existing software under an appropriate more heavily
used license.
4. Following up on #1 and #4, persuade users of lightly used licenses
to switch to an appropriate more heavily used license.
Abusing Rabbi Hillel, "There are only two licenses: reciprocal and
public. All the rest is commentary".
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