On 4/13/25 13:20, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
Leaving aside any political topics of disagreement between Debian and OSI
(and leaving aside the OSI position on AI for the moment):
Are there any software licenses that the OSI recognise that Debian doesn't?
This is in a work/commercial context: I have argued (for many years) that
"If it's in Debian main, it's FLOSS and free to use and you won't have to
pay licensing fees / run special software update servers" a.k.a. "Just use
Debian already, at least somebody will have looked at software licenses"
The software licensing mavens are now pointing people at the OSI site
which has a search engine to search for OSI-approved licenses at
https://opensource.org/licenses
The licensing mavens are taking this as authoritative and are suggesting
that software found there is FLOSS and can be used by developers for work
(but still at their own risk to some extent).
Given that the Open Source Definition is the DFSG with the identification
labels changed - am I still reasonable in my "If it's DFSG, it will
definitely be OK with the OSI / our developers"?
(It's often just as quick to check in a Debian mirror / an apt-cache search
for the software that's already packaged in Debian).
Thanks for any thoughts,
Hi,
the OSI has license not compatible with DFSG. For example "Reciprocal
Public License" fails with Debian "Desert Island" and "Dissident" tests.
Cheers,
Xavier
