Special Treatment

Posted Oct 17, 2007 21:39 UTC (Wed) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

I read the discussion for MS-PL, and this is what I gathered.

That was definitely a fraction of it, but certainly not all. I vaguely recall there having been a bit more, as the thread arose several times.

You'll probably notice that substantive discussion of proposed licences on license-discuss tends to get slightly swamped in (1) sparring between two or three licensing trolls delighted at the attention and everyone else, (2) net.randoms dropping in and posing questions about real and theoretical licence problems, and (3) various people arguing about gods-knows-what varieties of disputes regarding copyright, contract, trademark, and patent law.

Also, it's not unknown for a licence to get proposed and garner almost no comment from anybody, presumably because either the proposer or the licence text just didn't interest people. For example, Socialtext's radically toned down badgeware licence (CPAL) got exactly one objection, from Matthew Flaschen, that the mandated display of original-developer info (if the technology supports such a display) for "sufficient duration to give reasonable notice" still arguably violates OSD#3 (Derived Works) because logo accumulation through code reuse could become unreasonable and impractical. I answered: "I do agree with the concern about logo accumulation in derivative works, and have voiced it myself, but feel that some sense of proportion should be applied, in judging the proper extent of that concern. Yes, an important aim of open source is to make code borrowing lawful and practical (to the extent that licence compatibility allows), but, realistically, Nicholas Goodman's logo-overload scenario is (even under the early badgeware licenses with fixed-size logos on every page) a severe (yet amusing) over-exaggeration of what could ever actually happen in the real world."

OSI's Board approved CPAL without a great deal more discussion, and (IIRC) its report cited my comment and not a lot else. Partly, this was because nobody had much else to say. Partly, it's because the related issues had already been thrashed out in earlier discussion of the preceding MPL 1.1 + Exhibit B licences. My point is: Sometimes, you find few on-list comments because the proposal in uncontroversial, other times because it's just not interesting, other times because most relevant discussion occurred earlier in only peripherally related threads.

Thus, the best way to understand the general thrust of license-discuss discussion is to read it on an ongoing basis. Looking up The Friendly Archives is very useful, but might miss some.

Anyway, Matthew Flaschen and I (among others) explicitly opined that both Ms-RL and Ms-PL are clearly OSD-compliant, and did so both before and after one of those licences was renamed from its earlier naming. (Thus my point: You didn't find that.)

John Cowan opining that "the anti-proliferation rules should be set aside" for Ms-PL doesn't signify, for, among other things, the fact that OSI has no such rules: It has only an intent (and subcommittee) to develop some. (Note also that Cowan didn't opine that he considered Ms-PL duplicative within the meaning of the subcommittee's recommendations. He just felt that a procedure that he mistakenly believed to exist should be waived.)

I don't see what my real name has to do with the issue...

Well, other people very likely do. I expect to have to stand behind what I say, and therefore try to take great care (human frailty, limited patience, and caffeine deficiency permitting) to make sure I can. When others, like you (but far less so than many, to be fair), start asking me from behind cover of pseudonymity to answer their carelessly mistaken misrepresentations of my posts, I think it only fair to point out the asymmetrical nature of our discussion: You can take sloppy, somewhat disreputable potshots at my posts with impunity, create the expectation that I'm somehow obliged to disprove them, and if necessary walk away clean from your nick if it ever proves embarrassing. I can't; I'm posting as me.

But I didn't mean to harp on that (it's just because you asked, and besides, I gladly believe you that it was accidental), so let's please move on.

Have you never heard Ballmer speak in public? He will stoop as low as necessary to make business.

This would be a relevant objection if I'd said that Microsoft Corporation (or Steven Ballmer) were ethical. I did not. I said I said I believed them to be "smarter than that".

I don't think I should have to do all of your homework, so, consider taking a few minutes figuring out what you'd do if you were OSI President and observed that Microsoft Corporation were going around invoking OSI's name in public attempting to suggest that its proprietary software is in some fashion open source. Novice PR problem.

Let's see. If Microsoft ever publishes the words "Windows", "Shared Source" and "Open Source" in the same sentence then I win, and you will pay me a beer next time you visit Spain. Let's make it two years; after that you win.

"Memo from Joe Sixpack, Microsoft maintenance division, Madrid: Windows is mentioned in the company's Shared Source Web pages, and is not open source. Please send a copy of this memo to Rick Moen, and advise him that 'man_ls' and I will be each having half a beer at his expense." ;-)

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com