Robert Samuel White sez: > Apparently, Russ does not want to approve my license. This is > regardless of the fact that my license fully complies with the OSD and > is UNIQUE to any other license. > > There is a reason I called this license the Modified Artistic License -- > it is based on it, but very different than it.
Also, not a lot different from the attribution assurance license, other than the fact that it's longer, and the clause reading "You may not charge any fees for the Package itself". He made both of these points in his mail and you seem to be ignoring them. > I feel my license should be approved, but if the OSI suddenly feels the > need to selectively decide whose licenses are worthy and whose are not, > regardless of the fact that they comply with the OSD, then that's out of > my control, and yours. > > It seems to me that this kind of thinking is completely counter to the > ideas behind open source itself. Since we've obviously sunk to the level of making random, unproven and unfounded statements just for the effect they give: first, Russ is more likely to be in tune with the feelings of the open source community than you are, and second, if anyone is trying to subvert the open source movement it the kind of thinking behind the "Thou must not charge.." wording. Open source (as a direct descendent of free software, the FSFs definition of which explicitly permitted selling the product in question) *should* allow people to sell the product. Whether the OSD says this is so or not doesn't matter: the *spirit* of open source and free software (and their respective communities) says any software calling itself open source should allow it. Therefore, if anyone is counter-open-source-thinking it's you for ignoring the opinion of the community, making a license that doesn't conform to the open source community and complaining when it gets rejected. The OSD didn't form the community, the community wrote the OSD as a tool and as guidelines for anyone who wanted to co-operate. > It is not my intention to create a controversy within this group. I do, > however, think you have the right to know what kinds of decisions are > being made by OSI, and why. He's right on another important thing; we don't need more licenses. I think your purposes would be served just as well by an existing license than by writing a new one. Not that this by itself would exclude your license from being certified (if the license actually compiled with the open source community, which it doesnt, and with the OSD, which it almost does), but it is a bit of shame. > If this is the stance that OSI continues to impose, I will create a > nicely worded document about my experience with them, and post to my > website, and with all of my future licenses. Very mature thing to do. Keep up the good work. :-) > -Samuel lewis -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
