OSI procedures - a study in quotes [LWN.net]

The Open Source Initiative announced last April that it was forming a committee to address the license proliferation problem. This committee is charged with the task of coming to terms with this problem, proposing ways of improving the situation, and sorting open source licenses into "tiers" as a way of directing projects toward a preferred subset. The archive of the committee's closed mailing list suggests that, as of this writing, not a whole lot of work has gotten done yet.

The issue of committee membership recently surfaced on the license-discuss mailing list. Rather than attempt to summarize the discussion, your editor decided to provide a few quotes and let the participants speak for themselves. For the curious, the entire thread is available from the archives.

Some time ago, I applied to be on the license proliferation committee. I eventually got a form letter from Laura Majerus saying that they had too many qualified people....

Most of you will realize that I am uniquely qualified as the main author of the guidelines that OSI now seeks to interpret, and someone who has assisted many businesses and legal professionals in working within those guidlines since then. Two people with experience similar to mine but less in duration were admitted to the committee. There are a few legal professionals admitted. All others admitted are extremely worthy individuals, and have been working very hard at this, but I can't really say they are more experienced....

And thus, I really have to question the process.

-- Bruce Perens

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

It's very short. You should read it. I discovered something very interesting in it: it doesn't matter who writes the law, as long as the law treats everyone equally....

Rather than judging the process, you should judge the result. Since there are no results yet, you have nothing to say anything about.

-- Russ Nelson

Several years ago I agitated strongly about the lack of any semblance of democracy or transparency in the OSI. I stopped when I realized that the OSI didn't really matter. Since then the OSI has some to matter somewhat more--e.g., sourceforge.net looks to it to ratify licenses. But it still doesn't matter very much....

Personally I think the OSI should drop any claims about representing the community, and instead describe itself as a group of self-selected experts who periodically issue opinions about open source licensing-- i.e., more or less the same as any NGO. I think that would be more honest and more helpful.

-- Ian Lance Taylor

How we do things is immaterial. What we do is the only thing that matters. When you eat in a restaurant, you don't get to vote for the cook. You voted when you walked into the restaurant. People selected OSI because we matter.

-- Russ Nelson

I feel it's unfair to everyone, not just me, to keep my expertise off of the committee. That's why I stated my case.

-- Bruce Perens

The license proliferation committee will have to make hard decisions. We made one in your case, and you are attempting to strong-arm us into changing our minds. This is evidence to me that we chose well to keep you off the committee. The license proliferation committees' continued rejection of you is necessary practice for ignoring the anticipated pressure. Even though you don't like the form of it, you are contributing to the success of the committee.

-- Russ Nelson

A priori, democracy is held to be good. This is faith-based reasoning.

-- Russ Nelson

If the writings of Bastiat weigh stronger on the decision making process of the OSI then those of Perens, then maybe it's better that we don't get to watch...

-- Keven Bedell

In fact, you weren't rejected because you were or were not Bruce Perens on the night of September 22, 1997. You were rejected because you were person N+M on a committee of N people where M>0. No malice intended; you just didn't make the cut; sorry that you weren't even the guy out in right field; hope your feelings weren't hurt (would it help to apologize?).

-- Russ Nelson

The committee as it presently exists is over-lawyered, and I would have added some balance and a lot of skill. If you look at the discussion list, it will be clear that they aren't getting very much energy out of that group of extremely busy people. Turning away an extremely-qualified volunteer who has already worked on the problem isn't a good idea.

-- Bruce Perens

For what it is worth, the current committee membership is Brian Geurts, John Cowan, McCoy Smith, Diane Peters, Cliff Schmidt, Laura Majerus, Karna Nisewaner, Russ Nelson, Damien Eastwood, Eric Raymond, Mitchell Baker, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh and Sanjiva Weerawarana. There are no indications that any changes to the membership will be made.

(Log in to post comments)

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 25, 2005 9:06 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Religious? Frederic Bastiat was an *economist*. (A particularly readable one with non-loony ideas.)

(And `faith-based reasoning' appears to be code for `circular reasoning'.)

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 25, 2005 21:55 UTC (Thu) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link]

Russ needs to re-read Bastiat, me-thinks. Socialism treats everyone equally, but Bastiat was arguing against Socialism. Bastiat writes that the purpose of law is to prevent injustice from reigning (see the section "Law Is a Negative Concept") and not, as Russ incorrectly paraphrased, to treat everyone equally.

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Sep 1, 2005 19:02 UTC (Thu) by zakaelri (guest, #17928) [Link]

Of course, one of the problems with existence is that everything eventually comes down to faith... Whether it is faith in God, Self, Science, or whatever. Faith is how people operate.

I agree with Perens on this matter... The fact that he created the OSI guidelines implies that he would know best what their intent was. While nothing should be judged soley on intent, the motivations and ideas behind the creation of something -- the mindset or spirit of the author, if you will -- does provide healthy insight. It is for this reason that I, when creating various charters (for school activities), have always included an addendum that expresses the rhyme behind the reason.

I hope that by showing people what was already attempted, they can use that as a foundation for what they have done. Of course, since Perens is still available, it would make sense for him to join in the conversation.

Of course, it seems that Bruce's opinion matters just about as much as mine ;)

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 25, 2005 18:12 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

I'm missing who PB is, and what's this about calling the cops on ESR?
What did I miss?

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 25, 2005 21:36 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

PB is Bruce Perens. There was a story that ESR threatened to shoot him. When ESR says he'll shoot you, he's not joking, even if he's smiling. So Bruce reported the threat to the police. ESR got all flustered and offended about it; probably he thought threatening to shoot BP expressing respect. Anyway that's how the story goes.

I don't know if or how often ESR still threatens people with his gun, but if he threatens you, do report it.

Bruce vs ESR

Posted Aug 26, 2005 1:23 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Thanks. From there I was able to Google for it.

Here's Bruce's initial public message on the topic, though the context seems to be OSI's controversial endorsement of Apple's code license.

Not to bring back a six-year-old controversy, but I notice that the threat was (a) over email, and (b) did not explicitly mention shooting Bruce. On the other hand, I still think it was over the top and I don't think Bruce was unreasonable in his reaction.

OSI's relevance to the community has only dimmed since then.

Bruce vs ESR

Posted Sep 9, 2005 19:48 UTC (Fri) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

(Disclosure: I am on good terms with both of the people in question -- and hope to remain that way.)

First and foremost, the private e-mail about which Bruce (and you, rfunk) have, rather questionably, proclaimed that its author intended as a "threat" (impliedly, of violence) should not have been a matter for public mailing lists and Web sites, at all. Bruce, if you honestly believed it to be such, reporting it to your police department was appropriate — but posting it to debian-devel and elsewhere most certainly was not. One can reasonably posit a passive-aggressive attempt at character assassination in your reaction.

So: Bruce (and apologies to you and Eric both, for this being less than timely), simmer down, and, if you must fight, fight fair: You know that's no way to behave. As it is, the main lesson you've given people is "Don't trust Bruce with unguarded comments in private e-mail." Is that what you really want to be known for? Please understand that I say this with nothing but friendly intent.

Eric: Although any reasonable and minimally charitable reader would understand that the natural way an author and essayist will tend to "make you regret" things is with the pen rather than the sword (or boomstick or aikido punch), and that you do not have any history of beating people up just because you're frustrated and annoyed with them, a moment's contemplation will remind you that your "tribe" is unfortunately riddled with scurrilous gossips and trolls possessed of little or no moral scruple, not to mention those inclined to post first and switch on their brains later.

Nathan (ncm): I assume you've switched your brain back on, by now. ;-)

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 25, 2005 18:42 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]

I was optomistic when Russ took over but not so much anymore.

Russ Nelson was only briefly the president of OSI. He's still on the board, but Michael Tiemann is the President.

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 26, 2005 0:06 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

>making sarcastic comments about N+M>0

I didn't read anything sarcastic in the N+M. I think he's only trying to make the point of how uncomplicated the process of rejecting Bruce Perens was. There was probably some discussion we didn't see wherein someone suggested there was more to it.

Sarcasm is saying the opposite of what you believe and exaggerating it to show how it's ridiculous. But I'm sure Russ really believes it was an N+M decision just as he said.

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 26, 2005 3:19 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

If it was not sarcastic then it was very stupid. Here's an illustration:

Five people are present, four of them are chosen.
The one which was not asks why.
The answer given is that only four were chosen.

The non-chosen person is told nothing they don't already know (four of the five were chosen). What they asked about (the basis for choosing one over another) is not explained in the slightest by the answer.

OSI procedures - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 26, 2005 6:22 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I think you're right -- I read more into the statement than is there. I assumed he was talking about an ordering in time -- i.e. Bruce applied after the N positions were already filled. But it doesn't say that explicitly.