Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Note that the GPL is one of the least-understood licenses around, even by some of its supporters who make the most outrageous claims about linking. :-) From professional experience I see some non-GPL supporters top the charts in outrageous claims about GPL and linking. A particularly interesting case started with it's just a little bit on a dialog and then accounted a third of the external resources adopted by a proprietary product as GPL. So I guess we can find examples in both sides. If we are looking for a replacement to standard (which in my opinion seemed reasonable when explained and used within a specific context), then I'd guess even notorious could become a candidate on a voting poll if the intention is to find an accurate term that encompasses these licenses. With kind regards, Nuno Brito --- spdx: http://triplecheck.de/download phone: +49 615 146 03187 ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Thanks, Larry. The list is not designed exactly for the purpose of this discussion, but I thought it might provide some useful, objective data. Certainly not taking anything personally. All of your questions are good questions; most really important if one is recommending licenses which Black Duck generally, and the list absolutely, does not. The list is simply a ranking by “number of unique programs (in the Black Duck KnowledgeBase) under the license.” We call them as we see them, i.e. identifying the license declared for each project. So, while you might make a great point about the 2- and 3-clause BSD, we make the distinction and let lawyers decide whether they “give a damn about” it. We endeavor to capture any software freely available on the Internet and thus end up a long tail of associated licenses which are not strictly open source licenses. And, yes, we keep old projects and deprecated licenses. Understand that one of the key use cases the data are meant to support is scanning code to discover its composition, and often old components (with old licenses) turn up in new code. For lawyers who review code, the message of the top 20 list is that there’s a clear Paredo distribution; if you understand the top 10 or 20, you are in reasonable shape. This is back to Luis’ original point of which we should not lose sight; there are a bunch of good reasons to steer developers towards a well-understood licenses. Hey maybe “well-understood” is a good alternative to “standard. From: Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.commailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com Reply-To: lro...@rosenlaw.commailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com, license-discuss@opensource.orgmailto:license-discuss@opensource.org Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 16:06:41 -0700 To: license-discuss@opensource.orgmailto:license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Hi Philip, Thanks for the Black Duck Top 20 list of open source licenses. Your list is the best around, so please don't take the following criticism too personally. But this list demonstrates that even the ways that we calculate popularity are flawed. For example: · Are GPLv2 and GPLv3 really one license nowadays with total 38% popularity, or still two licenses? [Ben Tilly already made that suggestion on this list.] And the classpath exception version of the GPL (at 1%) qualifies that license for yet a third spot on your Top 20 list? · Same with the LGPL; is that one license at (5% and 2%, respectively) or one license at 7%? · Are these numbers based on lines of code created, numbers of unique programs under the license, or number of copies of the software actually distributed? For example, under what criteria does the zlib/libpng license count? Wikipedia describes that license as intended for two specific software libraries but also used by many other free software packages. That comment in Wikipedia is as vague and uninformative as the 1% that you cite in your table. I say this to point out that numbers on a list need to be *interpreted* and *scaled* to be useful. · Is there any value to listing the 2-clause and the 3-clause BSD licenses separately, given that no company lawyer in the world gives a damn about the distinctions between them? Meanwhile, every conversation about the BSD licenses on these OSI email lists concludes with the following great suggestion: Why don't you use the Apache License 2.0 instead? If OSI is ever going to recommend answers to easy legal questions, surely this is among them. It serves absolutely no useful purpose at this stage of our maturity to list each version of the BSD license separately – not even the two you placed on your list. · You list the CDDL, a license created by a company that no longer exists and whose successor company doesn't use it. Do we still count deprecated licenses for as long as a even single copy of that code resides in the wild? Not only that, but two versions of that single obsolete license are individually listed in the Top 20. · Wikipedia refers to the CPOL license as mainly applied to content that is being published on a single community site for software developers known as The Code Project. Wikipedia further reports that the CPOL license is neither open as defined by OSI nor free as defined by FSF. Why is it on your list at all? /Larry -Original Message- From: Philip Odence [mailto:pode...@blackducksoftware.com] Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 2:48 PM To: license-discuss@opensource.orgmailto:license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? In case it helps, Black Duck publishes a top licenses list based on the number of projects in our KnowledgeBase (out of a current total of about a million) that utilize each respective license. http
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Philip Odence suggested: Hey maybe well-understood is a good alternative to standard. Note that the GPL is one of the least-understood licenses around, even by some of its supporters who make the most outrageous claims about linking. :-) /Larry From: Philip Odence [mailto:pode...@blackducksoftware.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 4:52 AM To: lro...@rosenlaw.com; license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? snip ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
touché Maybe than “licenses that people think they understand From: Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.commailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com Reply-To: lro...@rosenlaw.commailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com, license-discuss@opensource.orgmailto:license-discuss@opensource.org Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 08:33:10 -0700 To: license-discuss@opensource.orgmailto:license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Philip Odence suggested: Hey maybe “well-understood” is a good alternative to “standard. Note that the GPL is one of the least-understood licenses around, even by some of its supporters who make the most outrageous claims about linking. :-) /Larry From: Philip Odence [mailto:pode...@blackducksoftware.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 4:52 AM To: lro...@rosenlaw.commailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com; license-discuss@opensource.orgmailto:license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? snip ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.orgmailto: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
[License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
ᐧ On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:37 PM, lro...@rosenlaw.com lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: Standard is a loaded term. Licenses are not standards and OSI is not a standards organization. Larry Louis: Consider flipping the FAQ subject to say: Why shouldn't I cook-up your own home-made license? I think it's easier to list the pitfalls of home-cookery while steering clear of standard. I also find that approach more compelling: you're telling people about risks that will trip them up, not warm and fuzzy benefits. :) -- Leon Rozenblit, JD, PhD President/CEO, Prometheus Research, LLC 55 Church St., New Haven, CT 06510 www.prometheusresearch.com email: l...@prometheusresearch.com phone: (203) 672-5810 public calendar: https://bitly.com/leon_apts responsiveness: I check email once per-day. Please call if urgent. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Simon Phipps wrote: Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization. I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses, but I have long challenged your attempts to steer people toward some subset of those licenses. Especially if you hint that they are in any way, shape or form standard licenses. That's overreach for which you are not legally qualified. /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw Einschlag ( http://www.rosenlaw.com/ www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 Cell: 707-478-8932 Fax: 707-485-1243 From: Simon Phipps [mailto:si...@webmink.com] Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:44 PM To: license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? I don't think that's the point of the entry Luis is constructing. He's using the word standardized as a term of speech rather than as a technical term. Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). S. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 8:31 PM, Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: How about OSI Approved license? That's what you do. Simon Phipps webm...@opensource.org mailto:webm...@opensource.org wrote: Care to propose an improvement? On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:37 PM, lro...@rosenlaw.com mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com lro...@rosenlaw.com mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: Standard is a loaded term. Licenses are not standards and OSI is not a standards organization. Larry Original message From: Luis Villa Date:04/27/2014 6:11 PM (GMT-08:00) To: License Discuss Subject: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Hi, all- A few of us were talking and realized the FAQ/website have nothing to explain why *using standard licenses* is a good idea. This being a sort of basic point, I started remedying the problem :) Draft FAQ entry addressing the question is here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/Why+standardized+licensing%3F There is also an incomplete potential more-than-FAQ answer that could be put somewhere on opensource.org http://opensource.org . The more I think about it, the more I think the FAQ may be sufficient, but I'd be curious what others here think and whether something longer is worthwhile. Feedback is probably better on-wiki but the list is fine too. :) Luis ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Lawrence Rosen wrote: Simon Phipps wrote: Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization. Can you elaborate on that please? OSI appears to be at least partially acting as a standard formation organization (particularly vis-a-vis the Open Source Definition). In your opinion, what precludes it from acting as a voluntary standards organization in a manner similar to IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C, and so forth. Arguably, its governance is a mess - for example bylaws that state it's not a membership organization, while at the same time soliciting members - but is that a show-stopper? Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses Larry hit on my suggestion. Anywhere the word standard is used, some variant of approved or OSI-approved is a reasonable replacement. Thanks, BC -- Ben Cotton ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Miles and others, Can you correlate what OSI does with what is described at http://opensource.org/osr-intro? I should also point out that criteria for open standards have been argued about extensively in the standards community. They are by no means widely accepted. I'm not suggesting that open standards (whatever that term means) aren't essential, but that OSI has a long way to go before it will be respected as a standards organization like the ones you mentioned (IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C, and so forth). I'm not sure I'd use your term show-stopper to describe this. I suppose anyone can voluntarily hang out a shingle calling himself a standards organization. But this isn't a time for amateur definitions of standards that won't be respected among standards professionals. That doesn't help anyone. What's worse, it doesn't help anyone choose an *appropriate* license for software. /Larry -Original Message- From: Miles Fidelman [mailto:mfidel...@meetinghouse.net] Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 8:40 AM To: license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Lawrence Rosen wrote: Simon Phipps wrote: Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization. Can you elaborate on that please? OSI appears to be at least partially acting as a standard formation organization (particularly vis-a-vis the Open Source Definition). In your opinion, what precludes it from acting as a voluntary standards organization in a manner similar to IEEE, ISOC (IETF), W3C, and so forth. Arguably, its governance is a mess - for example bylaws that state it's not a membership organization, while at the same time soliciting members - but is that a show-stopper? Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ 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
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 11:42:51 -0400 Ben Cotton bcot...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses Larry hit on my suggestion. Anywhere the word standard is used, some variant of approved or OSI-approved is a reasonable replacement. I might be confused but when Luis speaks of standard licenses I assumed he means a proper subset of the OSI-approved licenses, perhaps approximately the set of licenses the OSI has labeled popular (something I'm known to have criticized in the past), and I took Larry's initial response to be based on the same interpretation. To characterize all of the OSI-approved licenses as being standard in a common-sense sense would really stretch the common-sense meaning of standard. For an arbitrary example I picked in going down the list of OSI-approved licenses, to assert that there is something standard about the Attribution Assurance License would be bizarre; I trust no one would disagree with that. It's a *nonstandard* license. The fact that it was approved by the OSI is very important but it does not transform the Attribution Assurance License into something that is standard in a common-sense sense. As to whether it is appropriate to liken OSI to a standards group, that seems to be an orthogonal issue -- it's a different use of the word standard from the use I believe Luis is employing. - Richard ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Lawrence Rosen scripsit: Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization. I agree that OSI is not a standards organization *for* licenses. It has only one standard, the OSD. But by virtue of that, it is a standards-defining organization. There are thousands of SSOs (as distinct from ISO and the various national standards bodies), and their organizational structures are extremely diverse, from industry consortia to closely held companies. The main OSI activity, of course, is not standards setting or even standards maintenance, but certification. It may be compared in a small way to UL, which both defines standards and certifies a great many products for compliance to them. I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses, but I have long challenged your attempts to steer people toward some subset of those licenses. Especially if you hint that they are in any way, shape or form standard licenses. That's overreach for which you are not legally qualified. Nonsense. I and my friend George can constitute ourselves as an SSO with no formal legal relationship whatsoever, jointly issue standards for whatever we want, and even certify products for compliance with those standards. Nobody has to listen to us, of course. Indeed, the Scheme language is standardized by a process that is only one step up from this (as distinct from Fortran or C, which are ISO standards). Not that programming languages necessarily need standards: Perl 5 has none. Furthermore, the term standard is a regular part of Standard English and may be used freely by anyone. (Indeed, Standard English itself is a standard in every sense despite the complete lack of anything resembling a standards-setting organization for it.) By the same token, the GPL is a standard open-source license and the Motosoto Open Source License is not, though both are equally OSI certified. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org In politics, obedience and support are the same thing. --Hannah Arendt ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Lawrence Rosen wrote: Miles and others, Can you correlate what OSI does with what is described at http://opensource.org/osr-intro? Personally, I think it's up to OSI to make the case for what they do, and the extent that they are or are not a standards body. As far as I can tell, their open source definition is useful as a touchstone for comparing and contrasting various licenses that are promulgated by others. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
John, once again you state the obvious to support an invalid argument: By the same token, the GPL is a standard open-source license and the Motosoto Open Source License is not, though both are equally OSI certified. Do you expect anyone to argue that the GPL isn't the most widely used and popular open source license (although its author might quarrel with the phrase open source much as I do to the word standard)? I'm also comfortable with the suggestion that the Motosoto license is an irrelevancy in the software industry. If your FAQ wants to say that, do so. The GPL might also be standard in the way that Richard Fontana carefully used that term, but not as your phrase standard license implies. I affirm Richard Fontana's interpretation of my earlier note, that OSI often and incorrectly uses the word standard to mean popular -- and that's not good. Popularity and wide use do not a good standard make! Shall I recount the document format wars as an example where the widespread popularity of one standard (fostered by a big company with influence) was successfully fought by a smaller upstart who purportedly did things better? OSI's long-running attempt to reduce the number of open source licenses in widespread use doesn't turn OSI into a standards organization, merely advocates for easy answers to complex legal questions /Larry -Original Message- From: John Cowan [mailto:co...@mercury.ccil.org] Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 9:10 AM To: lro...@rosenlaw.com; license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Lawrence Rosen scripsit: Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). Perhaps, but that term has thus been misused. There is absolutely nothing about OSI – its governance policies, its procedures, its membership rules, its board selections, or its activities – that would in any sense qualify OSI as a standards organization. I agree that OSI is not a standards organization *for* licenses. It has only one standard, the OSD. But by virtue of that, it is a standards-defining organization. There are thousands of SSOs (as distinct from ISO and the various national standards bodies), and their organizational structures are extremely diverse, from industry consortia to closely held companies. The main OSI activity, of course, is not standards setting or even standards maintenance, but certification. It may be compared in a small way to UL, which both defines standards and certifies a great many products for compliance to them. I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses, but I have long challenged your attempts to steer people toward some subset of those licenses. Especially if you hint that they are in any way, shape or form standard licenses. That's overreach for which you are not legally qualified. Nonsense. I and my friend George can constitute ourselves as an SSO with no formal legal relationship whatsoever, jointly issue standards for whatever we want, and even certify products for compliance with those standards. Nobody has to listen to us, of course. Indeed, the Scheme language is standardized by a process that is only one step up from this (as distinct from Fortran or C, which are ISO standards). Not that programming languages necessarily need standards: Perl 5 has none. Furthermore, the term standard is a regular part of Standard English and may be used freely by anyone. (Indeed, Standard English itself is a standard in every sense despite the complete lack of anything resembling a standards-setting organization for it.) By the same token, the GPL is a standard open-source license and the Motosoto Open Source License is not, though both are equally OSI certified. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org In politics, obedience and support are the same thing. --Hannah Arendt ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Sidestepping the whole discussion around standard's bodies and other meanings of standard, when I read Luis' FAQ entry, the use of the term standard is really confusing... Specially since the Wiki page does not seem to imply any of the things being discussed in this thread... The entry seems to equate standard with OSI-approved: Using standard, OSI-approved open source licenses standard licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition standard licenses that have been approved by the Open Source Initiative Using standard, widely-used terms that comply with the Open Source Definition It has nothing to do with popularity or license proliferation, because standard is not used in this way in the text. More specifically: Using standard licenses [...] particularly those licenses that are widely-used (for me this clearly states that all approved licenses are standard, not only the widely-used ones) It also opposes standard with custom or new: reducing [...] legal errors that can be present in new, custom licenses. And some times, it seems to be one thing more then OSI-approved: using a well-known license that is standard in the community *and* [OSI-]approved (emphasis added) So, I think the text is really calling for a less confusing term, and I think OSI-approved is probably what we want here. After all, talking about the advantages of the OSI-approved licenses for projects, developers and managers is a great way to promote OSI. Cheers, Bruno. On 28/04/2014, at 13:04, Richard Fontana font...@sharpeleven.org wrote: On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 11:42:51 -0400 Ben Cotton bcot...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: I'm not quarreling with OSI's attempt to get everyone to use approved licenses Larry hit on my suggestion. Anywhere the word standard is used, some variant of approved or OSI-approved is a reasonable replacement. I might be confused but when Luis speaks of standard licenses I assumed he means a proper subset of the OSI-approved licenses, perhaps approximately the set of licenses the OSI has labeled popular (something I'm known to have criticized in the past), and I took Larry's initial response to be based on the same interpretation. To characterize all of the OSI-approved licenses as being standard in a common-sense sense would really stretch the common-sense meaning of standard. For an arbitrary example I picked in going down the list of OSI-approved licenses, to assert that there is something standard about the Attribution Assurance License would be bizarre; I trust no one would disagree with that. It's a *nonstandard* license. The fact that it was approved by the OSI is very important but it does not transform the Attribution Assurance License into something that is standard in a common-sense sense. As to whether it is appropriate to liken OSI to a standards group, that seems to be an orthogonal issue -- it's a different use of the word standard from the use I believe Luis is employing. - Richard ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss Bruno. __ Bruno Peres Ferreira de Souza Brazil's JavaMan http://www.javaman.com.br bruno at javaman.com.br if I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 15:03:20 -0300 Bruno F. Souza br...@javaman.com.br wrote: Sidestepping the whole discussion around standard's bodies and other meanings of standard, when I read Luis' FAQ entry, the use of the term standard is really confusing... I think so too now, in light of this thread at least. The entry seems to equate standard with OSI-approved: Using standard, OSI-approved open source licenses standard licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition standard licenses that have been approved by the Open Source Initiative Using standard, widely-used terms that comply with the Open Source Definition It has nothing to do with popularity or license proliferation, because standard is not used in this way in the text. More specifically: Using standard licenses [...] particularly those licenses that are widely-used (for me this clearly states that all approved licenses are standard, not only the widely-used ones) It also opposes standard with custom or new: reducing [...] legal errors that can be present in new, custom licenses. And some times, it seems to be one thing more then OSI-approved: using a well-known license that is standard in the community *and* [OSI-]approved (emphasis added) So, I think the text is really calling for a less confusing term, and I think OSI-approved is probably what we want here. After all, talking about the advantages of the OSI-approved licenses for projects, developers and managers is a great way to promote OSI. I'll pick on the Motosoto License here since someone else brought it up. If OSI-approved is what is meant by standard, then these arguments get much weaker. There is much to be said for the fact that the Motosoto License was OSI-approved. But any new project resurrecting the Motosoto License today would not inspire confidence or increase trust as a result of that license choice. (Maybe for a legacy project it would be different.) To make use of another use of the word standard, OSI approval signifies to me that a license meets minimum standards of acceptability, minimum standards of conformance to FLOSS norms, and I believe this is true of the Motosoto License. But only some OSI-approved licenses go further and inspire for me the kind of trust and confidence spoken of in Luis's draft FAQ entry. (For me, these are not limited to the licenses the OSI has recommended as popular or widely-used.) - RF ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 9:55 AM, Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: John, once again you state the obvious to support an invalid argument: By the same token, the GPL is a standard open-source license and the Motosoto Open Source License is not, though both are equally OSI certified. Do you expect anyone to argue that the GPL isn't the most widely used and popular open source license (although its author might quarrel with the phrase open source much as I do to the word standard)? I'm also comfortable with the suggestion that the Motosoto license is an irrelevancy in the software industry. If your FAQ wants to say that, do so. Suggested solution, can we use the word common instead of standard? And our definition of common should be something relatively objective, like the top X licenses in use on github, minus licenses (like the GPL v2) whose authors are pushing to replace with a different license. The problem is simple. Larry has a vested interest because he is the author of several licenses, and makes money in helping clients find the license that best meets their needs. Most other people in this conversation don't particularly care whether the license best meets the needs of the person writing software - as software consumers they want to have a small number of licenses to understand and deal with. Hence there is a desire to call some of them standard licenses. But when you throw the word standard out there, you give the implicit notion that there is a standard by which things were judged. And standards processes are always going to be very, very political because, by definition, they are attempting to select approved winners and the disapproved losers will always try (generally loudly) to influence the selection process. However we have no standards process, no standards body, and shouldn't be triggering that reaction lightly. But it seems to me that common pushes developers in a desirable direction, but does so subtly enough to leave Larry room for what he does, and without triggering the OMG, we're not following a standard! reaction where it is not warranted. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:31:06 -0700 Ben Tilly bti...@gmail.com wrote: Suggested solution, can we use the word common instead of standard? And our definition of common should be something relatively objective, like the top X licenses in use on github, minus licenses (like the GPL v2) whose authors are pushing to replace with a different license. You'd exclude the most commonly-used FLOSS license from common? - RF ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Richard Fontana scripsit: You'd exclude the most commonly-used FLOSS license from common? Well, the most common license is probably GPLV2+, not GPLV2-only. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org All Norstrilians knew that humor was pleasurable corrigible malfunction. --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrilia ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Apparently so. Because if you agree with the goals of the GPL, you should probably be using GPL v3+ rather than GPL v2+. On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Richard Fontana font...@sharpeleven.org wrote: On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:31:06 -0700 Ben Tilly bti...@gmail.com wrote: Suggested solution, can we use the word common instead of standard? And our definition of common should be something relatively objective, like the top X licenses in use on github, minus licenses (like the GPL v2) whose authors are pushing to replace with a different license. You'd exclude the most commonly-used FLOSS license from common? - RF ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
In case it helps, Black Duck publishes a top licenses list based on the number of projects in our KnowledgeBase (out of a current total of about a million) that utilize each respective license. http://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses The webpage only shows the top 20, but if OSI thought that 30, say, was a good number, we could provide those. By the way, we are working on improving the presentation of the list, but I didn¹t want to wait for that before throwing the thought into the mix. On 4/28/14, 4:57 PM, Richard Fontana font...@sharpeleven.org wrote: On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:31:06 -0700 Ben Tilly bti...@gmail.com wrote: Suggested solution, can we use the word common instead of standard? And our definition of common should be something relatively objective, like the top X licenses in use on github, minus licenses (like the GPL v2) whose authors are pushing to replace with a different license. You'd exclude the most commonly-used FLOSS license from common? - RF ___ 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
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Hi Philip, Thanks for the Black Duck Top 20 list of open source licenses. Your list is the best around, so please don't take the following criticism too personally. But this list demonstrates that even the ways that we calculate popularity are flawed. For example: * Are GPLv2 and GPLv3 really one license nowadays with total 38% popularity, or still two licenses? [Ben Tilly already made that suggestion on this list.] And the classpath exception version of the GPL (at 1%) qualifies that license for yet a third spot on your Top 20 list? * Same with the LGPL; is that one license at (5% and 2%, respectively) or one license at 7%? * Are these numbers based on lines of code created, numbers of unique programs under the license, or number of copies of the software actually distributed? For example, under what criteria does the zlib/libpng license count? Wikipedia describes that license as intended for two specific software libraries but also used by many other free software packages. That comment in Wikipedia is as vague and uninformative as the 1% that you cite in your table. I say this to point out that numbers on a list need to be *interpreted* and *scaled* to be useful. * Is there any value to listing the 2-clause and the 3-clause BSD licenses separately, given that no company lawyer in the world gives a damn about the distinctions between them? Meanwhile, every conversation about the BSD licenses on these OSI email lists concludes with the following great suggestion: Why don't you use the Apache License 2.0 instead? If OSI is ever going to recommend answers to easy legal questions, surely this is among them. It serves absolutely no useful purpose at this stage of our maturity to list each version of the BSD license separately not even the two you placed on your list. * You list the CDDL, a license created by a company that no longer exists and whose successor company doesn't use it. Do we still count deprecated licenses for as long as a even single copy of that code resides in the wild? Not only that, but two versions of that single obsolete license are individually listed in the Top 20. * Wikipedia refers to the CPOL license as mainly applied to content that is being published on a single community site for software developers known as The Code Project. Wikipedia further reports that the CPOL license is neither open as defined by OSI nor free as defined by FSF. Why is it on your list at all? /Larry -Original Message- From: Philip Odence [mailto:pode...@blackducksoftware.com] Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 2:48 PM To: license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? In case it helps, Black Duck publishes a top licenses list based on the number of projects in our KnowledgeBase (out of a current total of about a million) that utilize each respective license. http://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses http://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses The webpage only shows the top 20, but if OSI thought that 30, say, was a good number, we could provide those. By the way, we are working on improving the presentation of the list, but I didn¹t want to wait for that before throwing the thought into the mix. On 4/28/14, 4:57 PM, Richard Fontana mailto:font...@sharpeleven.org font...@sharpeleven.org wrote: On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:31:06 -0700 Ben Tilly mailto:bti...@gmail.com bti...@gmail.com wrote: Suggested solution, can we use the word common instead of standard? And our definition of common should be something relatively objective, like the top X licenses in use on github, minus licenses (like the GPL v2) whose authors are pushing to replace with a different license. You'd exclude the most commonly-used FLOSS license from common? - RF ___ License-discuss mailing list mailto:License-discuss@opensource.org License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss ___ License-discuss mailing list mailto:License-discuss@opensource.org License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss 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
[License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Hi, all- A few of us were talking and realized the FAQ/website have nothing to explain why *using standard licenses* is a good idea. This being a sort of basic point, I started remedying the problem :) Draft FAQ entry addressing the question is here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/Why+standardized+licensing%3F There is also an incomplete potential more-than-FAQ answer that could be put somewhere on opensource.org. The more I think about it, the more I think the FAQ may be sufficient, but I'd be curious what others here think and whether something longer is worthwhile. Feedback is probably better on-wiki but the list is fine too. :) Luis ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Standard is a loaded term. Licenses are not standards and OSI is not a standards organization. Larry Sent from my smartphone Original message From: Luis Villa l...@lu.is Date:04/27/2014 6:11 PM (GMT-08:00) To: License Discuss license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Hi, all- A few of us were talking and realized the FAQ/website have nothing to explain why *using standard licenses* is a good idea. This being a sort of basic point, I started remedying the problem :) Draft FAQ entry addressing the question is here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/Why+standardized+licensing%3F There is also an incomplete potential more-than-FAQ answer that could be put somewhere on opensource.org. The more I think about it, the more I think the FAQ may be sufficient, but I'd be curious what others here think and whether something longer is worthwhile. Feedback is probably better on-wiki but the list is fine too. :) Luis ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
Care to propose an improvement? On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:37 PM, lro...@rosenlaw.com lro...@rosenlaw.comwrote: Standard is a loaded term. Licenses are not standards and OSI is not a standards organization. Larry Sent from my smartphone Original message From: Luis Villa Date:04/27/2014 6:11 PM (GMT-08:00) To: License Discuss Subject: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Hi, all- A few of us were talking and realized the FAQ/website have nothing to explain why *using standard licenses* is a good idea. This being a sort of basic point, I started remedying the problem :) Draft FAQ entry addressing the question is here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/Why+standardized+licensing%3F There is also an incomplete potential more-than-FAQ answer that could be put somewhere on opensource.org. The more I think about it, the more I think the FAQ may be sufficient, but I'd be curious what others here think and whether something longer is worthwhile. Feedback is probably better on-wiki but the list is fine too. :) Luis ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss -- Simon Phipps*, OSI President* +44 238 098 7027 or +1 415 683 7660 : www.opensource.org ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
How about OSI Approved license? That's what you do. Larry Sent from my tablet and thus brief Simon Phipps webm...@opensource.org wrote: ___ 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
Re: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses?
I don't think that's the point of the entry Luis is constructing. He's using the word standardized as a term of speech rather than as a technical term. Mind you, OSI has described itself as a standards body for open source licenses for a long time, see http://opensource.org/about (I believe that text used to be on the home page). S. On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 8:31 PM, Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: How about OSI Approved license? That's what you do. Simon Phipps webm...@opensource.org wrote: Care to propose an improvement? On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:37 PM, lro...@rosenlaw.com lro...@rosenlaw.comwrote: Standard is a loaded term. Licenses are not standards and OSI is not a standards organization. Larry Original message From: Luis Villa Date:04/27/2014 6:11 PM (GMT-08:00) To: License Discuss Subject: [License-discuss] FAQ entry (and potential website page?) on why standard licenses? Hi, all- A few of us were talking and realized the FAQ/website have nothing to explain why *using standard licenses* is a good idea. This being a sort of basic point, I started remedying the problem :) Draft FAQ entry addressing the question is here: http://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Projects/Why+standardized+licensing%3F There is also an incomplete potential more-than-FAQ answer that could be put somewhere on opensource.org. The more I think about it, the more I think the FAQ may be sufficient, but I'd be curious what others here think and whether something longer is worthwhile. Feedback is probably better on-wiki but the list is fine too. :) Luis ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
