Richard Fontana <rfont...@redhat.com> writes: >> We're working on fixing those presentation problems; see >> >> http://projects.opensource.org/redmine/issues/4 > >I'm actually interested in seeing something more than mere >'deprecation', which might be appropriate for certain cases of >superseded or voluntarily-deprecated-by-steward licenses. > >The OSI should have some sort of process for delisting >formerly-approved licenses for reasons of failing to actually meet the >Open Source Definition (or some future replacement of it). That is to >say, the OSI should be willing to admit that it made a mistake, much >as a court (while it might ordinarily apply the policy of stare >decisis) will in certain cases overrule its prior decisions. Clearly >for policy reasons such actions should be exceptional rather than >common, and perhaps should be limited to certain licenses that were >approved during a particular period in the OSI's existence (I would >guess 2000-2005?). > >I think this is important because the existence, even in a >'deprecated' category, of licenses that (I would argue) were >mistakenly approved as 'open source' does some damage to the >legitimacy of the OSI and the OSD, and to open source itself. This is >particularly so because, as I understand it, the 'deprecated' category >is supposed to included licenses that do clearly meet community >standards for what's open source. > >Given that the few licenses in question are (I think) obsolete, what's >the harm in saying "sorry, we were wrong, this license is not an open >source license after all, and here's why"?
Someday it might be good to tackle this problem, yes. But I think doing the mere deprecations in clearly and effectively is a necessary first step along that road anyway -- and doing it will involve a lot of the basic analysis that we would need to do to take any further steps. That's why I'm concentrating my efforts on deprecation right now :-). Best, -Karl _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
