On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Craig James <[email protected]> wrote: > Let's back up a couple step. I can't even figure out what we're discussing. > > Do you want a *policy* for OB that all projects have to adhere to?
(I assume you mean BO for Blue Obelisk, not OB for OpenBabel....) We are typically promoting something... at least, that seems to be a public view on what the BO does... > Do you want *guidelines* for all projects under the OB banner? There is not one solution that fits all... but the wiki does make claims on what is good and not good... not sure what that should be technically called, but at least sounds a bit like guidelines, policies, best practices, ... > Is there some *specific project* that doesn't have a well-defined license, > such that it is of concern to the OB community? That triggered the discussion... > Do we just want to define terms like "open", "community" and so forth so that > we have a common terminology? Personally, I am not looking for definitions... in my original email I was bringing up our mixed 'standards' for the ODOSOS pillars... apparently, current 'policies' for Open Standards are less Open than for Open Source... (not requiring rights for modifications, for example)... I am not seeking a definite answer, and will actually promote Standards that allow modification and deal with the moving-target problem in different ways (e.g. like versioning). We do not need a single answer; what we need is: * clear rules what a specific project wants * the Blue Obelisk mailing list for discussing matters What I do not need: * rules carved in stone (then I would have to put in a requirement use of all 'Open' tools should not be hindered by requiring proprietary tools to run them, which violates at least some definitions of Openess, as brought forward in this discussion...) > If there are specific concerns about specific projects, then I'm all for a > hearty discussion. If we want to recommend specific licenses as "preferred" > for all OB projects, then that's a good discussion too. I agree with Peter that what we should not do, is endorse licenses... what we should promote is the Open principles: right to redistribute and modify, without hindrance of any kind. > As to whether any specific license or project, data, or community should be > called "open" or not, I don't see how that's useful. Just read the terms, > and decide for yourself if you want to participate in the project, or use the > project's results. I think this mailing list is certainly a proper place to discuss what a particular license implies or not, because we would all benefit from that knowledge. But I don't think that conflicts with your above statement. > The word "open" is more political than descriptive. Microsoft calls its > projects "open" for political/business reasons, but most open-source > contributors don't buy Microsoft's definition of the term. Richard > Stallman's definition of "open" is so extreme that I don't agree with it at > all, yet he has my respect. I'd rather not get caught up in semantics, but > instead prefer stick to pragmatic issues. That seems to be current practice... Egon -- Post-doc @ Uppsala University Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/ Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/ PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return on Information: Google Enterprise Search pays you back Get the facts. http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Blueobelisk-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/blueobelisk-discuss
