I completely support this, and am very happy to have it supersede my original proposed new page -- this way is better, both in the short term and the long term. Thanks for the well-explained proposal, Luis.
I especially like the second item under Miscellany, by the way :-). That will make maintenance of the list much easier, and I think it is something Infrastructure should look at after the Drupal upgrade. Terse only because in an airport waiting lounge, -Karl Luis Villa <l...@tieguy.org> writes: >Following up on Karl's email of a few months ago, this is a >deliberately low-key proposal from me and other board members to >simplify and improve how the OSI-approved licenses are presented on >the OSI website. As it currently stands, we don't have a page we can >point a newcomer to to learn about what an open source license is, or >what the most common licenses are. We'd like to solve that, at least >in part, by making the current http://opensource.org/licenses/ more >useful by highlighting the most common licenses and by providing a bit >more context about what it means to be an open source license. > >Despite coming from me and other board members, the text and layout >below are just a proposal, and are of course open to suggestions, >improvements, and discussion. > >What This Is Not >============ > >Karl's original proposal included suggestions of how to change and >update which licenses belong in which categories. This email and >proposed web site changes are definitely not addressing that issue. I >feel (and I'm pretty sure others on the board feel) that those >questions should be addressed, but because those are complex issues >that will inevitably involve months of careful discussion and >planning, and because we all agree that the current website layout is >unsatisfactory, we'd like to not block this quicker, smaller >discussion. > >The Proposal >========= > >1. Reorganize the left-side navigation. What is currently "Open Source >Licenses," with sub-points "Licenses by Category", "Licenses by Name", >"License Review Process," and "License Proliferation," would simply >become "Open Source Licensing" (content of that page discussed below). >"License Review Process" and "License Proliferation" would be moved to >bullets under "The Open Source Definition," because those pages are >primarily about OSI's process and standards rather than about specific >licenses or about open source licenses more generally. > >By slightly hiding the "by category" and "by names" pages, we'd be >funneling people (particularly newcomers) to a slightly more >informative page (and one that can be improved over time), while not >losing the master lists altogether for the times when those are >needed. > >2. The "Open Source Licensing" page (replacing >http://opensource.org/licenses/) would be fleshed out to say >(hopefully all changes self-explanatory): > > Open Source licenses are licenses that comply with the Open Source >Definition and have been approved through the Open Source Initiative's >license review process. > > The following Open Source licenses are popular, widely used, or >have strong communities: > > Apache License, 2.0 (Apache-2.0) > BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" license (BSD-3-Clause) > BSD 3-Clause "Simplified" or "FreeBSD" license (BSD-2-Clause) > GNU General Public License (GPL) > GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License (LGPL) > MIT license (MIT) > Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0) > Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL-1.0) > Eclipse Public License (EPL-1.0) > > A complete list of all Open Source Initiative-approved licenses, >including those above, is available: > > sorted by name (alphabetical) > sorted by category > > For more information about Open Source licenses and in particular >about the Open Source Initiative's license review process, see: > > The Open Source Definition (annotated version) > The OSI License Review Process > Information on License Proliferation and the 2006 License >Proliferation Report > >Miscellany >======== > >* We'll of course clean up any dangling links caused by changed URLs >and set up proper redirects before changing any URLs. (Not entirely >clear it makes sense to change /licenses/ to /licensing/, which would >be the primary URL change based on the previous suggestions). > >* In the longer term, once Drupal is upgraded, it will likely make >sense to generate http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical and >http://opensource.org/licenses/category programatically, rather than >through the current manual listing, which is of course error-prone. >(Some people have suggested doing away with the alphabetical list >altogether, which I personally would be fine with.) That may cause >some more tweaks in URLs and layouts, but we'll cross that bridge when >we come to it. >_______________________________________________ >License-discuss mailing list >License-discuss@opensource.org >http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss