[snip]
So if I understand correctly, the Simple Permissive License and the (ideally edited) Fair License both pass the litmus test of OSD. In addition to approving licenses which meet the OSD, the OSI also prefers to slow the proliferation of substantially similar licenses, and is therefore loathe to approve the Simple Permissive License. Finally, it seems that brevity in a license is not valued, or else that the value of brevity is outside the scope of the approval process.
With all due respect to opensource.org and the long volunteer hours they seem to be putting in, I would like to point out that their role seems to be that of a licensing approval body with some well defined criteria. They may be in flux and vague to some non-licensing types, but they are there, and those criteria are not easy to create.
And as such, their criteria and their general priorities are clearly stated. As with any standards type organization it's important to recognize that opensource.org people are working together to approve licenses they feel meet certain criteria and goals. Such direction and backbone is rare to find in the Open Source world.
Sure, I argue quite a bit, but it's just debate. I also expect that by definition, a licensing approval body like opensource.org _must_ have a record of denials in order to demonstrate their goals (which I might add are for the better).
My hat's off to them for sticking to their guns. They didn't even have my submission on the list but that's O.K., because if it's not meant for their purposes then at least they have said so. They didn't even list my license as being under consideration, which is O.K. When I submitted it I was told that there currently is a problem with the number of licenses being submitted in the first place.
One thing I don't understand is if the Fair License would satisfy the goals of the Simple Permissive License while being even shorter. Personally, I'm a bit uncertain about the Fair License, perhaps because I have no legal training and I am already familiar with the MIT (-original) license.
Keeping redundancy out of the mix is important. Since opensource.org has some trained legal people on their staff, I would suspect that if they think something is redundant for their criteria, then they should say so. I was surprised at the reaction to the NASA license, but I do hope that one provides some stimulus for opensource.org to evaluate its criteria. Open Source communities, especially governments using open source might learn a thing or two.
This licensing thing is complicated ;-)
Richard Schilling
(who hopes he doesn't confuse people when he makes an argument on a variety of sides of a debate)
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license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
