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OSI To Crack Down On "Open Source" Abusers
munchola sends us word that the Open Source Initiative is getting tough on any vendors who claim to be open source despite not actually using a license approved by the OSI. In his blog post, OSI president Michael Tiemann writes: "Enough is enough. Open Source has grown up. Now it is time for us to stand up. I believe that when we do, the vendors who ignore our norms will suddenly recognize that they really do need to make a choice: to label their software correctly and honestly, or to license it with an OSI-approved license that matches their open source label."
Is "Open Source" a registered trademark? If not, I don't think the OSI gets to decide which licenses are open source and which aren't.
why should they force companies to stick to a license, isn't this just OSI nearing closer to the same type of control corporation impose on their software
if there is a such a thing as true OSI then why do we need licenses? open source = you can see the source I don't think the definition should have to apply any further than that if companies dont want to
This is my sig, there are many like it but this is mine
So my license I make up for the hell of it with my terms that still allows anyone to view and audit my code if not approved by OSI means I can't market open source? Even though my code is open? Am I missing something about the word open?
So, they're all for open software and open licensing and open everything, but only if it's the kind of open approved by them?
Apparently it's okay to attempt to monopolise a market, as long as you're convinced that your intentions are noble. "Open Source" is not a trademark or brand name. It's a philosophy that's free to be interpreted by anyone. Including the user.
Since when does OSI have power over *anything*? This would be like the American Peanut Council complaining that certain products said they "may contain peanuts," when they actually didn't.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Open source is about exposing your code to the general public. This enables third-party developers to more easily analyze and make use of your software. It enhances the academic community's ability to experiment with, research, and just generally make "fair use" of software.
Free software is about exposing the intellectual property contained within the code - the copyrights and patents attached to the code. It enhances the public's access to software, and hence their ability to take full advantage of their computers. More importantly, it prevents waste. For example, can you imagine the extra cost to the economy if every developer had to implement public key cryptography from the ground up?
Free software implies open source; open source does not imply free software. Please, let's not confuse the two. It would be wonderful (and arguably sensible) if Microsoft made its code open source. It would be absurd for Microsoft to release its copyright of said code.
In composing the Open Source Definition, my aim was that there would be NO legal burden upon users at all. A user should be able to put OSI Certified Open Source software on a computer and go, without reading the license. That's one reason the OSD prohibited the then-popular "Educational Use Only" provision. Requiring the user to perform something - like transmit an advertising badge - is similarly unacceptable because it would place a legal burden on the user.
In practice, issues like patents and even Sarbanes-Oxley create a legal load for some users, but that is not under our developer's control. We had a license back then that imposed an attribution-related legal load on distributors: the original Apache license required attribution in some advertising. It was awkward, there was no way to implement it automatically, and it would have presented a scaling problem if hundreds of authors required attribution in - for example - an operating system distribution's advertising. The community eventually convinced Apache to drop the advertising provision.
That old Apache license has obvious parallels to more current "badgeware" proposals, but badgeware isn't a new issue for Open Source. Almost a decade ago, I reviewed the first Zope license for SPI. Zope's original submission required a web badge. I convinced their investor, Hadar Pedhazur, to make that a nice request rather than a requirement. Most people honored the request. The GPL contained an attribution provision, and still does. OSD was written to fit GPL. But the burden of the GPL's requirement was only upon developers, and it was the minimum necessary amount of attribution to communicate the author identification and the fact that the user had rights.
A developer can be especially irked when someone else labels that developers work as his own. But protecting that developer's business and taking the commercial value out of such relabeling does not require attribution. It could be done using any share-and-share-alike (GPL-like) license that closes the ASP loophole. But it's still fair for a developer to want to be attributed. I think the minimal practical goals for attribution are:
1) The developer should be able to find it.
and
2) The developer should be able to show to others.
This does not mean that the developer should require others to blow his advertising horn. Some companies already use attribution that isn't visible unless you are looking for it - it's embedded in HTML comments. In contrast, the draft Affero flavor of GPL 3 closes the ASP loophole by implementing the minimal necessary requirement for a developer to preserve a visible message informing the user of their rights. The visibility is to implement a separate goal of FSF: that users appreciate their rights and learn to demand them. Should OSI approve this new Affero license, or should it ask that FSF - rather than demanding a direct channel to users, search for that information and present the result on its own sites?
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I get really annoyed by a lot of people who claim they are called "Matthew".
So here's what I propose: let's all agree-- citizens, press, governments, and others shall use the name 'Matthew' to refer only to people who I have granted an official MPC-Approved license and follow the official MPC approved "Matthew" practices.
Otherwise, let's face it just about any plonker could call themselves Matthew, and we really don't want that.
Yours,
Matthew.
When all kinds of vendors were marketing fake cheese as cheese, the dairy industry got together and made up the 'Real' mark. I don't see this as anything different. I'm really happy with the 'Real' mark for dairy products, and I'm similarly happy with that sort of a mark for software products. If nobody decides that Open Source means something in particular, soon it won't mean anything at all and will be a completely useless word as applied to software.
Today it happens to be the irritating and not hugely awful problem of badgeware. Tomorrow it will be some vendor that attacks something more fundamental like free redistribution.
So, I'm happy the Open Source Initiative has taken this stand. It's the right thing to do. It's easier to monitor the reputation of one organization than it is to monitor the reputation of thousands. So we can all decide for ourselves if the OSI suddenly decides to refuse the use of the trademark to random companies that really are Open Source.
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