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OSI Creates License List
Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative voted April 5 to approve the following motion: ``To improve the process of evaluating proposed licenses as OSD-compliant, we will establish an open mailing list where such proposed licenses may be discussed. The names of the companies associated with such licenses may be anonymized.'' That mailing list has been created and is license-discuss.
" Interesting - looks like us legal nerds need to be subscribed to yet another list now...Glad to see OSI opening
up a bit.
On the OSS web page I remember reading about some sort of "branding" program. They are trying to control it all.
Honestly, I don't use the words "open source" any more. Its plain wrong how they have twisted words around to imply they are owners/founders of this movement that has been going on for many years.
The whole idea of "free software" being determined by a "service mark" or having an organisation tell others who is free or not, or who has the right to use certain words, is a contradiction in terms.
However well-meaning some proponents of this may be, this just a step in the direction of certification programs, professional organizations, unions, lobbies, and similar horrors. Read Milton Friedman on the subject.
Anyone interested in applying, defending, or embracing some buzzword or other abstraction is just living in some groups' consensual hallucination. There are only trees... don't try to define what a forest is, who deserves to belong to it, or where the boundaries are.
More and more the Open Source Initiative looks like a group (or should I say an individual) who is trying to wrest control of the free software/GNU-Linux/your moniker here movement, since only THEY (he?) really know what's good for the rest of us.
/. commentators, the OSI is obviously trying to create a controlled environment, where only those who are worthy can comment and critique.
After ESR blasted those who dared to go public on their criticism of the APSL, and denigrated the intelligence, integrity and maturity of
Anonymizer? Have they been reading too much Dilbert? Are they afraid of being nuked by Gates? Give me a break. Any company who is not willing to have an OPEN discussion of its OPEN source licence is not really interested in OPENing themselves up to the world. And if so, who cares? Most of us, I'm sure, have better things to do with our time then support a PR campaign of some greedy corporation riding the latest buzzword bandwagon.
In short, the OSI is becoming more marginal and irrelevant the harder it tries to "lead."
I have not been happy with some of the OSI's actions and with its organisational structure. But I know a potential improvement when I see it. This mailing list is. I urge those interested in free software licensing issues (e.g. the debian-legal subscribers and misc.int-property and misc.legal.computing readers) to join. License dissemination is best done in the open.
And now that work is done on reorganising SPI into an open and democratic organisation (join the spi-general list if you're interested), it will hopefully be able to manage the Open Source mark itself in the not too distant future.
Exercise: Construct a sentence using at least three of the things hackers detest and avoid.
Example:
*See Aesop's Fables; specifically, those relating to the Fox.
The quote contained herein is derived from the campaign slogan of the 1992 Democratic party candidates for the presidency of the United States; William Clinton and Albert Gore. It is believed to be in the public domain, and thus derived works do not present any legal problems. If that is not the case, fuck you.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
*/
/* Compile with '-o remember'. Run at least once a day for best results.
*/
main(){
}
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Let's be clear about what is at stake. The OSI is an effort to bring the practicalities, as well as the freedoms, of open-sourced software to the corporate world. In doing so it is trying to make the software world a better place. Who knows whether they will succeed, or are even on the right track. The worst that can happen is that the PHBs sieze on the notion of Open Source, fail to comprehend it and screw up, and move on to the next software fad. The future of Linux, and of free software, is NOT at stake. In other words, we stand to gain if the OSI succeeds, but we do not stand to lose if it fails.
The prospect of Linux, or the free software community in general, selling its soul and becoming corporate or proprietary is nearly impossible. There are several reasons for this.
- The hobbyist comparison isn't all that relevant. This is completely different from what Gates was doing. Commercialization and popularity are not what made Microsoft a monster. Proprietary code made Microsoft a monster. Gates, by the way, was a major pusher against piracy in the hobbyist community even before Microsoft. Proprietary, un-free code has always been the foundation of his power. Corporations can profit from free sorftware, to be sure, but not in a heavy-handed Microsoft way.
- The community wouldn't allow it. The fact that so many people have qualms about the road we are taking proves that. If Linux were to ever be subverted from its open and free ideals, all Linux development would immediately come to a halt. The recent growth of Linux regardless, the hacker community is still the heart, soul, and guts of Linux. No corporation has a prayer of keeping Linux vibrant without it. That, after all, is the whole message of the OSI, that open source development is not only more equitable and moral, but more effective.
- The source is out there. Any attempt to subvert Linux, or any Free/OSS project, and make it proprietary, would fail, because the code is already out there, to be forked and continued openly. Even if somebody could claim ownership, you just can't make several million people delete the code from their computers.
- The GPL. Above all, the GPL. Because of the GPL, barring some major revolution in copyright law, nobody can ever claim ownership of Linux, Apache, or any other free/OSS project. Nobody can own it, nobody can buy it, nobody can control it, except in the most trivial sense of, for example, Linus owning the name "Linux." The great merit of the GPL is that it ensures that free software will always be free.
The essence of it is, as long as we are here, as long as we want software that works, works well, and doesn't hold us hostage to the whims of corporate bean-counters, and as long as we are willing to work for it, free software and OSS can never lose."Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
It's not actually a bad idea or necessarily bad for the OS movement. Let me explain:
It's about market forces where just about everything is driven by financial initiatives, and now Open Source is one of them. There is of course more than just a buzzword with the label. It is a process and philosophy, and if by adopting and co-opting that process and philosophy the company gains, so does Open Source, as a vindication of the processa and a legitamitzation of the concept, that it indeed is workable and useable in the marketplace.
I'm not so sure I can agree with you that there lies a beauty in the elite nature of the movement and its software. I find it hard to envision any justification in which the term elite can be applied in a positive manner. An elite cadre of programmers describes the top notch talent of the programmers. Open Source being elite just seems to be a form of discrimination and arrogance, as it is a philosophy and a practice, not a social standing or ranking.
Open Source's strength and power would not be diluted even if everyone and their brother use the operating system and software associated with Open Source. The concepts and philosophies don't get watered down, don't get diluted by usage, and likewise it's elitist nature doesn't make it powerful. This sounds suspiciously similar to the arguments and rationalizations of devout Mac-heads or OS/2 proponents. Elitism is only justified by actions and respect, not by the trappings and choices you make. Using Linux, driving a Lexus, eating caviar does not make one Elite. Being able to scan and debug assembly in machine code, write 3d engines in a bored afternoon stupor, or surfing the jaws of Hawaii with the best are all examples of being elite.
Open Source should not become an issue of Us vs Them. As a philosophy I can understand the desire to remain unsullied, unpolluted, undesecrated by commercial interests, but it is also a practice and a principle which can be applied, and that any enterprising business would be stupid to just ignore out of hand.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
So I'm not yet a contributor to the movement. I haven't written code, submitted patches, or even run Linux. Despite that I think I believe in the process of Open Source and what they stand for.
Disclaimer out of the way, I'll continue with the rant. Open Source seems to be two things that are tied together by the people involved. A philosophy of sharing, openness, cooperation and interoperability, and a practice of which involves massively distributed parallelism, high turn around and response, self involvment through self interest, and the end result of increased participation and code quality.
I'm sure many businesses could care less about the philosophy while expressing interest in the practice. These are not individuals we are speaking off, but corporate entities with a dedication to output and income. As such they may seek to incorporate the many strengths and benefits of Open Source without changing their own corporate culture, but I really can't see that happening. The process will change them by its very nature.
I would extend an analogy; Open Source is akin to stock options or performance based bonuses, in which an individual's choices and performance are reflected in their rewards. For many the reward can be seen in an excellent sample of code, a working piece of software, the esteem and respect of their peers, or getting their hardware operational. Traditionally non Open Source models used a paycheck as reward for any and all of those; pay an individual to slave away to produce those results. Open Source models would instead substitute more code and more problems as a reward, to be worked on, analyzed, and dissected.
It would seem that in traditional models the reward is the ends, and the work the means. Perhaps in Open Source it is the path and the journey which are the reward, with no real ends in sight. The value of the process is inherent in the process itself, though of course pleasure and happiness exists with a working end product. I suspect that for many involved in Open Source the act of coding and programming is a joy and an ends in of itself, and a working end product merely a beneficial side effect of the process. IE, nature enthusiasts enjoy the hike and the climb as much as the waterfall or cliffs or lake at the end of their journey, if not more.
That being said, I don't see how a company can tap into Open Source and remain closed and proprietary at the same time. If the supporters and contributors don't or can't have access to the final product, they won't know that their contribution means anything at all, or worse yet, if they have to buy the product they contributed, they have to pay just to see the fruits of their labors, if it even got included!
It may seem contradictory to espouse the value of the journey and then speak of the end product, but in any journey one ostensibly has a goal, even if it is never reached or seen. It is the destination one is walking towards, rather than just walking in circles, even as one enjoys and absorbs the value of the journey itself.
This is just an observation of one who is surrounded by OS geeks and nerds(I'm a CS major at Caltech!), by Slashdot, and the chaos that is the www, as well as a sometime student of economics and philosophy...
Comment away!
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Am I the only person who fears that large corporate companies will start to use the Open Source buzzword as selling points? See Microsofts recent blasphemy. The Open Source community used to be a closer knit collection of programmers, althought now it would seem that more and more largre companies, i.e. IBM, Dell, Microsoft, Apple, et. al. are trying to jump on this subcultural bandwagon to benifit themselves financially. The beautity that lies in opensource is it's freedom, also though, an unwritten beauty comes from it's elite nature. The fact that not everyone and their brother uses this magically open source operating system and it's components it what makes it special. I only hope that the acceptance of more and more licensing standards doesn't fractionalize the open source community more, thereby dividing the power it has. I think we need to keep these big companies, who probably don't see the ideals behind OSS out of our game. There is fewer recorded benifits from commercialization of things like OSS than there are from letting the community continue on it's own. In the up coming months the OSS community is going to see a larger and larger acceptance among Industry. Many people see this as a light at the end of the tunnel. But remember that Microsoft's products were once a hobbiest style software, and where are they now that commericialization and popularity are on their side? Is this the same course that we want GNU/Linux to take? I would rather it remain quality and not in the mainstream than to sell out for popularity.
Just my worthless meandering.
There is no public archive (yet), and there is no subscription confirmation (yet). We have some ducks which still need lining up. In the meantime, you'll be on the list if you've sent mail to the -subscribe address.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
This idea had been posted by a number of people on slashdot, so it is good to see that the people at OSI do listen to the community. If nothing else, this shows good will (something that was required -- it was almost at the stage where portions of the community had no support for OSI).
Now OSI needs to follow up on this, and actually listen to and participate on this open list. If this list is not used by OSI in the decision making process, the list gives the community nothing. Only time will tell how successful this move is.
If OSI respects the opinions of people on the list, the actions of OSI and the process by which licences are approved will be much closer to the open model some people wanted for OSI from the start.
The idea of having anonymity for the companies proposing licences is good for two reasons. First it will allow companies thinking about releasing source code to keep their internal decisions private until they want to tell people about it. Also it should make list members more objective about what they are reviewing (would you be more critical of a new proposed open source licence from Microsoft or one from companies you may consider friendly like Netscape or Cygnus?).
The other thing needed for this list to succeed in its goal is for the right people to subscribe (this means both ESR and Bruce Perens among others -- I hope they can stay civil).