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.

Comments

I guess they do listen

[JamesHenstridge]

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).