OSI Modifies Open Source Definition

The Open Source Initiative has modified their official definition of an open source software license. The change itself is minor, but they're also calling for more input on other possible improvements to the definition - see below for more.

Russ Nelson writes: "We changed the Open Source Definition today. Some people had the idea that "may not" in Section 1 meant that they had a choice. We changed it to "shall not". Other changes may be in the offing. The OSD says nothing about use licenses or patents, for example.

"A use license is largely unenforcable by itself. How can you tell what people are doing with software if anyone is allowed to redistribute it to anyone they want? Some parties have tried to enforce a use license by requiring the non-removal of certain parts of the code. This is, in itself, already prohibited by the OSD, however it's best not to rely on indirection to keep use licenses off Open Source software.

"Patents are a problem that have been anticipated by some licensors. In part the furor over the APSL 1.0 was produced because they reserved the right to revoke the license if it turned out that they were licensing software patented by someone else. A number of new licenses have specifically included terms that require contributors to license any applicable patents. And yet the OSD does not require this. What is the good of an OSI Certified piece of Open Source unless you can use it? And you certainly shouldn't allow someone to sue any contributor over patent infringement and still have a license to use the software.

"Are there other lapses in the Open Source Definition? Send them to me and I'll summarize for the board. Speaking of the board, Brian Behlendorf (Apache/Collab) and Ian Murdock (he put the ian in Debian/Progeny) have resigned, and Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Michael Tiemann (co-founder of Cygnus) have taken their place."

Comments

Correction: All your base SHALL belong to us

[Anonymous Coward]

Much better!

Bull

[Arker]

The purpose of the GPL is to eliminate any chance that a programmer might use the code in a way which would provide him with a financial reward for his hard work. This is, again, blatant discrimination.

Nonsense. The purpose of the GPL is to keep software licensed under it Free. It's obviously more difficult to make money selling software when that software is Free, but it is far from impossible. See Selling Free Software. In fact, the FSF considers the ability to sell the software for a fee an essential component of Free Software - the Yast license, for one, is classified as non-free because it forbids this.

Even Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL, says that "Free Software [note the caps; Stallman considers this to mean "GPLed software"

Whoah, slow down there troll-boy. Free Software is most definately NOT the same thing as GPL'd software. See this list of licenses on the GNU site - particularly the ones listed under headings "GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses" and "GPL-Incompatible, Free Software Licenses."

15 licenses are listed as GPL compatible, and an additional 21 are listed as not GPL compatible but still Free Software!

"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."

Re:Time to remove the GPL from the "approved list"

[Russ Nelson]

In a sentence, the goal of "OSI Certified" Open Source is to identify software that people can modify and/or redistribute. We intentionally say *nothing* about whether you can re-license a piece of Open Source code so that it is not Open Source.

Given that goal and non-goal respectively, the GPL does not discriminate against people who want to deny OSD rights to recipients of their code. Such people are perfectly free to modify and/or redistribute GPL'ed code.
-russ

Obfuscated code

[ryants]

Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed.

While I understand the intention and rational of this requirement, it does have some issues:

• Deliberately obfuscated code (like we see here at the IOCCC) should be able to qualify as Open Source somehow. You can learn a lot from those goofy programs. :)
• Exactly how does one judge what has been deliberatly obfuscated, and what is just really shitty code? Frankly, I think the clause should say "no shitty code allowed", but hey... that's just me :)

Ryan T. Sammartino