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OSI Turns Down 4 Licenses; Approves Python Foundation's

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the keeping-the-updates-going dept.

Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative turned down four licenses this week. Not to name names, but one license had a restrictive patent grant that only applied to GPL'ed operating systems. Another was more of a rant than a license. Another was derived from the GPL in violation of the GPL's copyright. And the fourth had insufficient review on the license-discuss mailing list (archives). The one license that did pass was the Python Software Foundation License."

2 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hypocrisy by pope+nihil · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    He doesn't make a living selling copies of the GPL, but that doesn't mean he won't exploit copyright law to his own ends. Everyone knows he's a control freak. Everything has to be GaNew or someone should make a competing GaNew project that copies the functionality. Linux isn't really an operating system. It should be GaNew/Linux.

  2. Re:Hypocrisy by kaisyain · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Disallowing others from modifying your manifesto is not inconsistent with the GNU philosophy

    From GNU's Free Documentation License:


    The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.


    It certainly seems that they don't feel that their license needs to be "free" is the sense of the word they apply to other written documents. Does the FSF offer some explanation for why some written documents should be "free" and others not? Does the same line of argument apply to software?