Re: Non OSI approved licenses

[William A Rowe Jr <wr...@rowe-clan.net>]

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 7:32 PM, John D. Ament <jo...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 7:51 PM Jim Jagielski <ji...@jagunet.com> wrote:
>>
>> One thing I was just reminded about by Henri Yandell is that OSI is now
>> occasionally approving new licenses, after years of hold the fort against
>> license proliferation.
>>
>
> And I believe this is the root of the issue.  I can agree, and generally
> feel more comfortable, using software that is OSI approved.  It has been a
> huge asset for a number of internal reasons to look at a list of
> dependencies, say its (mostly) all OSI approved, and being able to explain
> the few exceptions.
>
> However, if OSI has a hard to use process for review and approval of new
> licenses, it becomes a pain.  I'm assuming for arguments sake this ignores
> things like BSD/MIT derivatives (since those licenses are effectively
> templates) and focuses on more obscure licenses (e.g. Ament Public LIcense).
> I do feel in the case where OSI has not ruled, it is on ASF legal to provide
> a ruling on behalf of a project indicating what they can/cannot do.  I think
> there's also enough pre-existing knowledge to give this insight based on
> pre-existing licenses and if there isn't enough information we have to rule
> on the safe side - don't do it.
>
>>
>> Certainly, no one want a return to gobs and gobs of vanity license but
>> it does make sense that if there ARE licenses that may be important
>> to the ASF and their projects, that people ask OSI to consider these
>> licenses for approval.
>>
>> I don't think we should have such actions as an official action by
>> the ASF, but if PMCs think it is important enough, and they also
>> agree w/ the idea that their projects should only be dependent on
>> OSI approved licenses, then it's an option.
>>
>
> And just to be clear - OSI has approved licenses that span all three of our
> categories - A, B and X.  This statement isn't a blank statement to do
> anything with any license, but still follow the categories of each license.
>
> I would then expect that we categorize each OSI approved license (
> https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical ) into one of our categories.
> I would also expect a "pass" for the template style licenses I mentioned
> above.

So if I'm to read your comments in the context of Jim's plea for vendor
non-neutrality in favor of OSI (and a board position he was seeking)
along with Roy's comments in favor of Apache's own self-governance,
I'm left with this impression...

Jim, are we insisting that the ASF approve all OSI approved licenses?

Jim, what is the intersection of OSI approval with ASF values that you
actually want to permit?

This all reads to me as a marketing campaign for an org which approves
no licenses, defends no licenses, defends no authors. It actually reads
as campaign hogwash.

Thank you for stepping down so soon in the face of this conflict of
interest, and I sincerely mean that. Serving two masters and all of the
accompanying complications.

Should we table this entire topic until we have an instance of something
Apache-accepted but OSI-unaccepted license to consider? As every
lawyer has ever told me in any context, give me an actual example to
consider. Top-post ex-Legal-VP's subject was entirely vapid and without
any actual substance to consider. Let's declare all such posts off-topic
and beg for someone to bring us an actual ASF project with a possibly
conflicting license to take under consideration, eh?

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Re: Non OSI approved licenses

[William A Rowe Jr <wr...@rowe-clan.net>]

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 12:46 AM, William A Rowe Jr <wr...@rowe-clan.net> wrote:
>
> This all reads to me as a marketing campaign for an org which approves
> no licenses, defends no licenses, defends no authors. It actually reads
> as campaign hogwash.

Sorry, wrong word. s/approves/authors/

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