As per my recent post to comp.os.plan9, a copy of which is at the end of this email, I'm thinking of asking for the current Plan 9 license to be approved by OSI.
Given that I'm just a member of the public, and not the owner of the license, can I do that? If I can, are all relevant parties happy for me to do so? -- ralph PS. If you wish to use my email address, delete the XXX from the start. ===================================== Subject: "Plan 9 teeters on the edge of freeness but... Date: 2002-09-09 03:00:03 PST ...falls howling into the abyss of doom..." [1] (A rather colorful way of saying that the Plan 9 license, as it stood when the statement was made, should not be considered "open source". [2]) Afaict, there was a clear good faith effort at one point to respond to RMS' points and to have the Plan 9 license OKed by the OSI. [3] It seems the license got close. [4] But, for some reason, there was no closure on the process; and at some later date someone at Lucent apparently decided to take the position that Lucent would not subject their licenses to certification by 3rd parties, and this presumably stalled the attempt to modify to meet the needs of the open source community and have it certified by OSI. [5] Is this about right as an assessment? Is there really some fundamental issue that means Plan 9 is destined to never become genuinely open source? Could *I* try to see if I can get the license certified? -- ralph [1] At least, a poster stated as much a couple years ago in: http://tinyurl.com/1chc It looks like the license was subsequently changed in a way that I suspect would have satisfied the quoted poster. But the "teeters on the edge" quote still seems apropos for the reasons stated in the rest of this email. [2] By "open source", I mean as defined by the OSI (http://www.opensource.org/), the body trusted by many hackers to identify what is and is not open source. [3] "Rob Pike has submitted the plan9 license..." (cut/paste next two lines together): http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi? 3:mss:1988:200007:aankcpfkdbioplpjjacb [4] Two lists of issues I found from the FSF and opensource.org web sites were, respectively: RMS' summary of Plan 9 license issues as of Oct 5 2000: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html John Cowan's summary of Plan 9 license issues as of Aug 20 2000: EITHER full URL (cut/paste next two lines together): http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi? 3:mss:2173:aankcpfkdbioplpjjacb OR short alternate URL: http://tinyurl.com/1ch9 I note several license modifications that appear to be attempts to address many of the key points raised. [5] Apparently there was a "Lucent policy decision" not to pursue license approvals: http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:5 -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
