Miles and others,
Can you correlate what OSI does with what is described at
http://opensource.org/osr-intro?
I should also point out that criteria for open standards have been argued about
extensively in the standards community. They are by no means widely accepted.
I'm not suggesting that open standards (whatever that term means) aren't
essential, but that OSI has a long way to go before it will be respected as a
standards organization like the ones you mentioned ("IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C,
and so forth").
I'm not sure I'd use your term "show-stopper" to describe this. I suppose
anyone can "voluntarily" hang out a shingle calling himself a standards
organization. But this isn't a time for amateur definitions of "standards" that
won't be respected among standards professionals. That doesn't help anyone.
What's worse, it doesn't help anyone choose an *appropriate* license for
software.
/Larry
-----Original Message-----
From: Miles Fidelman [mailto:mfidel...@meetinghouse.net]
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 8:40 AM
To: license-discuss@opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on "why
standard licenses"?
Lawrence Rosen wrote:
>
> Simon Phipps wrote:
>
> > Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open
> source licenses
>
> > for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that
> text used to be
>
> > on the home page).
>
> Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely
> nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its
> membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would
> in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization.
>
Can you elaborate on that please? OSI appears to be at least partially acting
as a standard formation organization (particularly vis-a-vis the "Open Source
Definition"). In your opinion, what precludes it from acting as a voluntary
standards organization in a manner similar to IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C, and so
forth. Arguably, its governance is a mess - for example bylaws that state it's
not a membership organization, while at the same time soliciting members - but
is that a show-stopper?
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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