Bruce Perens and the OSI board [LWN.net]

By Jake Edge
March 24, 2008

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed almost ten years ago to safeguard the "Open Source" name. Over the years it has approved licenses and attempted some other activities while, generally, having little relevance to the wider community. It has often been seen as a relatively closed and non-democratic organization. Now one of OSI's founders is trying to get back into the organization and change its direction; the outcome of the resulting discussion may (or may not) change the direction of the OSI.

Bruce Perens has launched a bid to be elected to the OSI board of directors, but this bid has not been particularly well received by the current board. His on-line petition to collect community support specifies a number of reasons that he wants to be on the board—those reasons are ruffling some feathers. Outgoing board member Matt Asay has taken Perens to task for some of his statements as has OSI president Michael Tiemann.

Perens's reasons for wanting to be on the board are threefold: reducing the over-representation of vendors, trying to ensure Microsoft does not get a seat on the board, and reducing license proliferation. The idea of a Microsoft seat on an open source organization's board is sure to rile a segment of the community, which is undoubtedly part of what Perens is hoping for. The likelihood of that happening is pretty small, though. Tiemann makes it clear that the board doesn't elect companies at all:

The OSI nominates people to the board despite their corporate affiliations, not because of them. The idea that the OSI would elect a "Microsoft" board member is as absurd as the idea that we'd elect a "Google" board member or an "IBM" board member. We elect people based on their own merits, not the merits (or demerits) of the companies or organizations they are affiliated with.

Microsoft and its employees do not currently contribute to open source in any substantial way, so there is little that would lead the board to nominate them. If that ever changes, it would be pretty disingenuous to deny someone a seat because of their employer's past—or even at that time, current—misbehavior. In addition, it is hard to see how one board member—Perens or someone "controlled" by Microsoft—is going to make such a crucial difference in what the board does anyway. In many ways, the Microsoft connection is a red herring—one sure to rally the troops, though.

Reducing license proliferation is a noble goal, one that the OSI tried to tackle a few years back without much in the way of tangible success. Perens states that he would like to see OSI do more reduce the number of licenses, but his claims about the number of licenses needed have raised eyebrows:

Another problem is the failure to reduce the number of different licenses in general use. My own work in this area shows that only four licenses, all compatible with each other, can satisfy all common business and non-business purposes of Open Source development. Three of these licenses have essentially the same text, and the fourth is very short. Life would be easier if more projects used them. While it would be difficult to shut down approval of new licenses, I think OSI could be more proactive at reducing license proliferation.

Part of the reason that Tiemann and others are skeptical is due to some obvious bad blood between the board and Perens over the license proliferation committee. LWN covered some of that "debate" in August 2005. Perens clearly believes he should have been a member just as strongly as others on the board seem to feel he should not have been. When the board was formed without him as a member, Perens refused to participate in the process in any way. It seems to stick in the craw of some for Perens to now claim that he has the solution. Russ Nelson, former OSI president and current board member—as well as a member of the committee—sums up the frustration in a comment on Tiemann's post:

I don't see how Bruce can claim to have a short list of four licenses. I start with BSD, GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPLv2 and LGPLv3 and that's five. If he thinks that people should simply agree with him that all GPLv2 should be relicensed GPLv3, I invite him to spend some time with Linus Torvalds, who notoriously and politely disagrees.

Having a solution is not the same as convincing people to adopt it.

It is rather interesting to see Perens trying to get back on the board that he famously resigned from in 1999 after having founded the organization with Eric Raymond in 1998. This is not the first time Perens has lost interest and/or resigned from some form of community leadership position; Debian and UserLinux spring to mind. Though none of the expressed concerns about his candidacy have mentioned it, some must be wondering how long it would be before ideology or a shifting focus caused Perens to move on from a board position if he were elected.

Perens has been an excellent advocate for free software and/or open source over the years, but his tendency towards self-promotion grates on some. It may not be an ego thing, as he claims, but it certainly rubs some people the wrong way. The ego issue is one of the reasons that board observer Andrew Oliver does not support Perens for the board:

A return to a very Amerocentric hacker culture voice with big egos is not the answer to OSI's problems. I think OSI is on the path to real fundamental change. I'd like to hear Bruce explain what he'd do differently in collaboration with others who may not always agree with him.

Asay certainly doesn't see Perens as having the right credentials either:

The OSI needs a vibrant membership of those currently shaping the open source landscape. It's possible that its current make-up doesn't reflect this. Point well taken. But it's equally possible - indeed, I'd say probable - that Bruce's directorship wouldn't change this. I like Bruce but aside from the occasional picketing he does, I can't point to anything substantive he has done for open source in the past half-decade or so.

The petition drive came about because Tiemann encouraged Perens to show that there was strong community support for him to be a part of the board. As of this writing, the petition has garnered more than 1700 "signatures", which Perens believes is enough:

Regarding my candidacy, OSI's board, through its president, asked me to show an uprising of strong community support if the board was to to elect me. I have. Now that I have done what you asked, are you going to hide behind complaints about my campaign, which is really quite mild in its criticism and is in no way the "scorched earth" that Matt refers to, or are you going to do what you said? If you OSI can't handle a political opponent on my laid-back scale, you'd only looking for yes-men.

The OSI board is "self-replacing" with current board members nominating and electing candidates for empty slots. Each director serves for a three-year term, with roughly one-third coming up for election each year—though this year there are five slots to be filled. Three directors are standing for re-election, leaving two slots open. Unfortunately, it's not clear when the actual election will be held, nor is there likely to be any advance notice of who has been nominated. Transparency, it seems, is not one of the attributes of OSI.

Self-replacement and overlapping terms of office tend to give a certain stability to a board, but it also creates a kind of inbreeding. It is unlikely that a board will nominate people who think substantially differently from themselves. This is one thing that Perens is trying to circumvent with his very public candidacy. Whatever else can be said about Perens's candidacy, it is clear that he would bring a different voice into the OSI boardroom.

But, what is OSI really? Is it an organization that is somehow supposed to represent all of the diverse voices in the community? At the moment it appears to exist for the purpose of approving licenses and "protecting the Open Source Definition". Perens thinks it could be more than that. OSI itself seems to agree as they have been moving towards more relevance in the community. Oliver describes that effort:

OSI is trying to solve its problems, by becoming more grassroots and less bottom up. Meanwhile, it is trying to grow the movement by expanding its international representation. Corporations do influence OSI, in that not all of the board has a free hand to say what is on their mind publicly. However, the solution is to make the OSI board what it should be: a governance board.

OSI and its board are currently in a state of flux, trying to define a role for themselves that is broader than just a license approval body. There doesn't seem to be a lot of discontent within the board that might lead to Perens or another controversial figure being added. Whether this leads to continued stagnation or a more vibrant OSI remains to be seen. A more interesting question might be: will anyone care?

If OSI starts to do visible things for the community, it will finally acquire some relevance. Given the attitude towards his candidacy, it seems unlikely that Perens will be able to lead the board in that direction. Which leaves it up to the current board and the two new members—neither of which are likely to be Perens—to find a way to make the community care.

(Log in to post comments)

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 18:30 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Jake, you should point out that the famous license proliferation committee that refused to seat me finally was not able to take any action regarding license proliferation.

Also, I'm disappointed that you did not publish much of the interview we had, it was a lot of work for me. Here are parts of two emails some will find relevant:

I really was afraid that they could vote in a Microsoft representative, next year if not this. After all, Matt has Microsoft giving the keynote speech at his "Open Source In Business" conference, and OSI is being so close-mouthed about this election that nobody knows who the other candidates are, or even the date of the election. But Mike Tiemann assures me they aren't considering MS, and Matt says he's the only one who actually did consider Microsoft (interesting the way he admits it while denying its possibility).

Jake Edge wrote:

You have mentioned the four licenses that would take care of all open source license requirements, what is the status of those? Have you specified them somewhere so that folks can look them over, etc?

I've been giving my Open Source Governance consulting customers this for some time, minus the political discussion because it doesn't apply to them, but I haven't published it.

First, the goals:

Meet most business (and non-business) purposes of Open Source. I go into the purposes in explaining the licenses.

The licenses must be compatible with each other, so that all of your projects and their derivatives can be mixed with all of your other projects and their derivatives.

Protect yourself. The most pressing need to protect yourself, and Open Source in general, is regarding software patents. The need to protect yourself is illustrated best by the JMRI (Java Model Railroad Interface) case. The JMRI developer was using an Artistic license. A manufacturer of model railroad throttles incorporated the JMRI code into his product, and then sued the JMRI author for patent infringement, seeking to prevent that developer from distributing the Open Source to anyone who wasn't using that manufacturer's product. The case hasn't gone entirely well for the JMRI developer because the Artistic license was legally weak. So, if you don't want to be taken advantage of by unsavory characters like that, you'd better have solid patent language in your license.

Essentially, you need these licenses:

Gift: This license has essentially no strings other than protecting the developer from patent suits by his own users regarding his own software. You use it when you want people to use their software in both proprietary and Open Source code, and you don't want them to worry about the license. For example, if you are trying to push a standard API layer for some task, you might distribute the example code to handle that API under this license so that everybody can use it in both proprietary and Open Source software.

Sharing with Rules: This license acts to keep all implementations of the software free by using a strong "reciprocal" provision. If you make a derivative work, you have to give everybody the source code, and the rights to modify, redistribute, use, etc. This is a very important license for businesses that want to make money through dual-licensing, like MySQL. They have the GPL, and then a commercial license that they sell to anyone who doesn't want to have to GPL their derivative work (I'm ignoring issues of MySQL's server-client nature and how the GPL applies to that for the purposes of this example). It keeps your competition from running away with your product, by binding them to be your partner in development. In the volunteer developer community, a strong reciprocal license is often preferred by developers whose motivation is to build up Free Software rather than to assist proprietary software.

In-Between: Something between gift and sharing with rules, to require a derivative work of a module to have reciprocal provisions while allowing that work to be bound into a greater product that is proprietary. LGPL is the most-used example of this. It motivates public cooperation from proprietary developers,

Software-as-a-Service: The Affero GPL is an example of this, so is the Socialtext license. They are kludges to get around the "ASP problem", the problem of works that are derivative of a reciprocal license but are performed rather than being distributed. They help some vendors maintain a dual-licensing paradigm while producing a software-as-a-service product.

You can achieve most purposes in Open Source with this list.

The political part is which licenses you pick, not that you pick licenses to do these things. To illustrate, suppose you pick this set:

Gift: BSD
In-Between: GPL with exception.
Sharing-with-rules: GPL
Software-as-a-service: Affero GPL.

This gives you a working set of licenses, pretty compatible with each other, and the text of three of them are very similar so there are really only two licenses to understand, and they have the advantage that they are in very broad use. But some of the community are kicking and screaming because they resent and oppose the GPL and the Free Software Foundation, or something similar. And there are also the problems that BSD doesn't have explicit patent protection language, and the GPL has been criticized for legal ambiguity.

So, to resolve the legal ambiguity you go to LGPL3, GPL3, and Affero GPL3. These have been scrutinized by a committee of lawyers from many major corporations and other entities during their development, which is much more than we can say for most other Open Source licenses. So they have more legal solidity. But some component of the community is kicking and screaming even worse because they distrust the GPL3 effort.

So, you may have to use licenses that duplicate the effect of LGPL, GPL, and Affero GPL without coming from FSF, to calm down the violent opposition. You craft these licenses carefully to be compatible with the FSF ones. But now you may have had to create more licenses, and you have a new part of the community kicking and screaming because they'd rather you used the FSF ones.

And somewhere in there you have to find a version of the BSD license with better patent protection, which may get the BSD folks upset, even though you are doing this for their own protection.

So, that's the political problem. The assignment is to navigate your way through this, satisfying a lot of people but NOT getting a complete consensus. Then evangelize the result and try to gently influence people to use your minimal combination rather than all 70 licenses out there at the moment. I think it could work pretty well. Never perfectly.

Bruce Perens

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 18:47 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

But there is no "GPL", Bruce. There is version 2 of the GPL, and version 3. There are also many works licensed as "GPL version 2, or any later version". However, without the "any later version" clause, GPL versions 2 and 3 are not compatible.

Your recommendation for mutually compatible licensing would suggest a recommendation of "GPL v2 or later" (or, at least, GPL2 || GPL3) for those wanting maximal compatibility together with copyleft. But your message here suggests that Mike Tiemann is correct in saying that you are oversimplifying.

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 24, 2008 18:58 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Joe,

Obviously the problem is picking just one. In doing this, you have to consider who is most likely to be influenced by a campaign to use just four licenses for all of your Open Source work. Obviously, new projects are the easiest ones to influence. For old projects that have removed the "or any later version" text to relicense is much more difficult and I'm not going to push them to do that.

So, what license of GPL1, GPL2.*, or GPL3 would you recommend that new projects use? Obviously GPL3.

Bruce

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 25, 2008 23:52 UTC (Tue) by raboofje (guest, #26972) [Link]

what license of GPL1, GPL2.*, or GPL3 would you recommend that new projects use? Obviously GPL3.

Without wishing to start a flame war, I don't think this choice is all that obvious. Personally, I don't want my software to be 'protected' against 'tivoization': that's perfectly fair use to me.

On the other hand, I think things like the 'smooth path to compliance' rules in GPLv3 are a considerable improvement over GPLv2.

I don't think the choice is obvious. I, for one, haven't made up my mind.

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:08 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Without wishing to start a flame war, I don't think this choice is all that obvious. Personally, I don't want my software to be 'protected' against 'tivoization': that's perfectly fair use to me.

That's fine. You are welcome to waive that term regarding your own work.

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:25 UTC (Wed) by raboofje (guest, #26972) [Link]

You are welcome to waive that term regarding your own work.

Wouldn't that render my work incompatible with any code under the unmodified GPLv3? Seems like license proliferation on the micro-scale to me...

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:33 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Wouldn't that render my work incompatible with any code under the unmodified GPLv3?

No. You are welcome to give people more rights. It's just taking them away that is a problem. But you do not have the right to force the copyright holders of any other GPLv3 software to give away more rights too. So, if you have made a contribution to a larger work, the fact that you give away more rights to your part of that work may not be very useful to others.

You might be able to operate a project where waiving that particular right is the rule for the whole project. You could simply refuse to accept any code that didn't have that right waived. Of course, people could make a fork if they didn't like that.

Bruce

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 27, 2008 1:47 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

it just means that someone can take your code and combine it with GPLv3 code and remove the
permission that you granted.

if you just use GPLv2 (without or later) your code cannot be (ab)used this way.

believe it or not Bruce, many people aren't happy with others taking their code and putting
more restrictive licenses on the resulting work and will pick a license that doesn't allow
that

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 27, 2008 2:01 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

believe it or not Bruce, many people aren't happy with others taking their code and putting more restrictive licenses on the resulting work

I understand. It's my honest opinion that whatever is chosen, somebody would be unhappy with the choice. In this case I think that more people are going to be willing to put up with the tivo stuff in order to have a license that went through that high a degree of legal review.

Thanks

Bruce

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 27, 2008 12:52 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> it just means that someone can take your code and combine it with GPLv3 code and
> remove the permission that you granted.
In the combined work, yes, but in your code, no. You granted the permission to tivoize 
your code, your permission is there, latent. If I take _your_ code and put in my TiVoSX, but 
not the code that the other author does not want tivoized, it's ok. That is the beauty of the 
GPLv3+waivers:

Your code: GPLv3 + waiver tivoizing
My code: GPLv3
Combined code: GPLv3

If anyone wants to tivoize your code, _nothing_ will stop them. Your wishes regarding 
_your_ code are _always_ respected. Now, your wishes regarding _my_ code...

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:54 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]

And that, boys and girls, is what polite people describe as proof
by assertion...

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 3:12 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Would you like to engage in argument, or just contradiction?

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 20:17 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]



So MIT wouldn't be covered? So using X wouldn't be an approved software? Apache isn't free
either? And why not these? And at what level does OSI become irrelevant because huge sections
of what people use isn't considered open/free/libre enough? [This is the opposite of the other
question which I would say "no to: Is OSI relevant because it has accepted every license under
the sun?]

And if in the end you are elected, what then? Will you see through the entire lifetime of your
seat even if you aren't able to get enough others to vote for your views?

What I am trying to see is what is your real committment, and what are you really trying to
achieve. Is it to represent the people who sign your petition (whether they completely agree
with you or not), or is it more of a protest campaign where you are going to try and get
enough 'outrage' to set up some sort of rival organization. Not that doing so would be a bad
idea, but I would prefer to have it in the open.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 22:35 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

So MIT wouldn't be covered? So using X wouldn't be an approved software? Apache isn't free either?

MIT and Apache licenses would continue to work exactly the way they do today, and would be considered OSI Certified. I would think that even the Apache Foundation would appreciate the need to focus on one MIT-BSD-Apache like license for the future rather than some large number of them. That's for the future, not asking for anyone's present practice to change but making a strong recommendation for new projects. Maybe they'd help.

Regarding the seat, I haven't walked off of a position in a long time. People don't seem to appreciate it even when it's done for the best reasons, and maybe I'm a bit wiser than I was then. I think being a dad has helped, as I have things more important than Open Source in my life now and can thus have more perspective.

I was on the W3C patent policy board with Microsoft. That was harder than this would be. We got the job done.

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 19:46 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Thankyou for the clarifications. And yes, we all have grown up in the last 10+ years...

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 22:57 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Is it to represent the people who sign your petition (whether they completely agree with you or not), or is it more of a protest campaign where you are going to try and get enough 'outrage' to set up some sort of rival organization. Not that doing so would be a bad idea, but I would prefer to have it in the open.

I am not planning to set up an alternative organization to OSI. I would consider promoting the 4-license thing without their help, though.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 23:50 UTC (Mon) by pinky0x51 (guest, #40742) [Link]

Gift: BSD
In-Between: GPL with exception.
Sharing-with-rules: GPL
Software-as-a-service: Affero GPL.

Maybe you should try to join the FSF instead of the OSI. The FSF already promotes a set of 4 licenses and to use compatible licenses: GPL, LGPL, Affero GPL and in some cases BSD-style licenses (afaik e.g. to push a standard like Ogg Vorbis).

OK, you would have to talk about Free Software instead of Open Source. But as you said already 1999: "It's Time to Talk about Free Software Again"

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:03 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

You mean the FSF BOARD??? That's a lot more difficult to get on than OSI's board.

I am already an FSF associate member. Fortunately, today nobody at OSI is running a campaign to deprecate Richard Stallman any longer. That was the problem in 1999.

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:20 UTC (Tue) by pinky0x51 (guest, #40742) [Link]

I don't know the internal structure of the FSF and how hard it is to get on the Board.

But i thought that for you the topics (e.g. license proliferation.) is the important part and
not your position in an organisation. I think you could find more like-minded people in the
FSF than in the OSI for this topic. So i think you could at least work with them together in
promoting such a set of licenses. If they will offer you a place in the board and when they
will do it depends probably on how satisfied they are with your work but this should be an
minor point, shouldn't it? It's the work which is important not the position.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 4:42 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I think you could find more like-minded people in the FSF than in the OSI for this topic.

It would be very comfortable for me to work with the general FSF membership, because I appreciate the need for Freedom, as they do. If you think I can be prickly, you haven't worked with the FSF leadership. I hold Richard very highly, but he is the world's most difficult person to be friends with.

But we're not really discussing the mission I have set myself, which is to be a bridge from people who fully appreciate the Free Software movement to people who don't. Participating in "Open Source" lets me get to them. And eventually a lot of them realize that Stallman was right, but they certainly don't start out that way.

Bruce

Tackling proliferation

Posted Mar 25, 2008 3:10 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Bruce, I received your request for help but didn't sign it because I didn't really see the problem with OSI: nowadays it approves licenses and otherwise keeps a low profile. Now that I have read your extended description, it seems that this blind approving of licenses is precisely one of the issues you have. Please excuse or ignore this lengthy message, but I think your message is well worth an in-depth response.

Correct me if I'm wrong: you want OSI to have not just the "OSI-certified" label, but a new "OSI-recommended" badge for a limited set of (four) licenses. That is actually a very good idea, and something that should have come out of the license proliferation committee if at all possible. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. Which licenses do you select for this recommended set?

In your most interesting message you suggest a set of exactly four licenses: in FSF terminology they would be permissive non-copyleft (as BSD), weak copyleft (LGPL), strong copyleft (GPL) and strong interactive copyleft (AfferoGPL). However, whether it is better to go with existing licenses (essentially as FSF recommends) or to craft new ones (responding to specific concerns) is left open. So let us discuss both scenarios with a couple of thought experiments and see where we get.

First, what if OSI goes with new licenses and creates them. Responding to license proliferation with even more license proliferation, in the form of four new licenses, is probably not going to be well received. And besides: similar efforts in the past have all failed to make an impact against the workhorse of free software licenses, the GPL. So in all likelihood this effort will probably be ignored by all major players, who seem to be already happy with what they have, and so will leave OSI recommending four licenses which nobody uses. Hardly the way to make OSI more relevant than they are today.

Then, we are left with what if OSI recommends BSD and three GPLv3 derivatives, which you imply fit essentially all of the requirements. As another commenter suggests, OSI would then recommend essentially the same licenses as the FSF. But this was already tried by the proliferation committee: in their report they state their initial intent to do exactly this, and how they failed. In their words:

Originally, the LP Committee started to divide the OSI approved licenses into "recommended," "non-recommended" and "other" tiers. The committee concluded, however, that any such normative characterization would properly be a matter for policy matter for the OSI Board to decide.

So, "a matter for policy matter"... or in plain English: OSI didn't want to step on any toes. The first problem is why recommend one license over another where some equally good candidates exist. From your analysis it would seem that your set of four is perfectly rounded, with maybe a few details to discuss, e.g.: maybe Apache 2.0 should be preferred over BSD. But there is a gaping hole in your criteria: what here on LWN was reported as "a commercial version of the GPL".

This is where things get really hairy. This license is not simply weak copyleft: as with the MPL, portions of the code can be incorporated into proprietary works on a file-by-file basis, and continue being free software. As Russ Nelson explained in that same LWN interview:

CDDL. Or more properly, the MPL, since it already has traction in the community (clearly, since Sun wrote the CDDL based on the MPL). A lot of licenses are derived from the MPL. If we can figure out why they derived the MPL rather than using it, we can fix the problem in the MPL that caused them to do that.

There is obviously a need for this kind of license since a few of them have been proposed. Note that in OSI's report, the "recommended" category (which finally was "Licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities") lists four candidates for this "commercial GPL": MPL, CDDL, CPL and EclipsePL. Apparently the committee couldn't "figure out why they derived the MPL rather than using it" and so included all of them. The report also recommends three permissive non-copyleft: BSD, MIT and Apache 2.0, presumably trying once more to avoid to step on any toes.

And then there is a second toe-stepping problem: there were other special interests which didn't fit into a limited license set (like your four licenses plus "commercial GPL"). Who is the OSI anyway to decide what commercial interests are? In the end they reported on seven convoluted categories, and as could be expected never got anywhere.

But this cannot be blamed on OSI. Either you get knee-deep into "matters for policy matters", as the FSF, and step on whatever toes are necessary, with the consequences we all know; or you are left with convoluted categories and bland policy statements. I'm not so sure there is a middle road. So, I'm left wondering what you would do if you were in OSI that would make any difference.

Tackling proliferation

Posted Mar 25, 2008 4:33 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Correct me if I'm wrong: you want OSI to have not just the "OSI-certified" label, but a new "OSI-recommended" badge for a limited set of (four) licenses.

That's right.

Responding to license proliferation with even more license proliferation, in the form of four new licenses, is probably not going to be well received.

I wouldn't like it either.

[Quoting the report] The committee concluded, however, that any such normative characterization would properly be a matter for policy matter for the OSI Board to decide.

That sounds right.

So, I'm left wondering what you would do if you were in OSI that would make any difference.

Get them to lead. Get them to tell everybody we know this is going to offend some people, but those people are free to use the OSI-approved licenses they already like, and by recommending this set we take the strongest possible step to set the license-proliferation problem on the path to being a diminishing problem in the future. This is the best we can do to make that happen.

And then have them stick to their guns.

Thanks

Bruce

Tackling proliferation

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:43 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Thanks. After reading these messages (along with the clarification below that LGPLv3 solves the "commercial GPL" license problem) I have now signed the petition.

Tackling proliferation

Posted Mar 26, 2008 17:39 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Thanks!

Bruce

Commercial GPL?

Posted Mar 25, 2008 5:41 UTC (Tue) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Just what is a ``commercial GPL''? What is its intent?

I've read the MPL a time or two, but my eyes glazed over. I'd appreciate a brief ``compare and contrast'' of the MPL vs. the GPLv2.

Thanks.

Commercial GPL?

Posted Mar 25, 2008 6:09 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

As far as I can tell, LGPL3 achieves all of its goals. Allow software to be linked into proprietary works and still remain free on a file-by-file basis.

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 26, 2008 1:56 UTC (Wed) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

> So, to resolve the legal ambiguity you go to LGPL3, GPL3, and Affero
> GPL3...

Not that I care about your quest to make OSI even more irrelevant by 
joining it, but the irony of you joining an advocacy organization is just 
too much.

You are the reason I will never write any code under GPL version 3.  
Before encountering you, I merely thought GPLv3 was a bad idea that I 
could ignore.  Your misguided and aggressive trolling of the busybox list 
(a full decade after you'd abandoned the project, never posting _once_ to 
that list until you came back as a troll) is what pushed me over the edge 
to actively work _against_ GPLv3.

These days, I license all my code GPLv2 only, the same license as the 
Linux kernel.  My code _cannot_ be used under the terms of GPLv3, and 
never will.  Although I was never likely to leave GPLv2 behind, you're the 
one who convinced me to drop the "or later".  Because you advocated for 
GPLv3 _that_badly_.

And now you want to join the board of an advocacy organization?

Dude: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Maturity (or lack thereof)

Posted Mar 26, 2008 17:26 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

So you admit that you go out of your way to oppose a license for reasons of petty spite.
That's not as impressive as you seem to think.

Maturity (or lack thereof)

Posted Mar 27, 2008 17:36 UTC (Thu) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

I thought GPLv3 was a bad idea for day 1, long before Bruce showed up.  
Primarily I thought it was unnecessary, divisive, and an order of 
magnitude more complicated than its predecessor (which is a big down side 
all on its own).  He didn't change my mind on that.  I just wasn't 
motivated to _do_ anything about it, and was happy to ignore it the way I 
ignore other licenses (like the CDDL) that I consider a bad idea.

Bruce's attempt to advocate in favor of GPLv3 failed so spectacularly it 
left me motivated to actively oppose GPLv3.  His advocacy backfired.  The 
_point_ of my post was that he's not planning to join an advocacy 
organization to increase the scope of the damage he can do, and alienate 
more people.

However, I expect the actual _effect_ of this would be to cause OSI to 
collase into complete dysfunctional irrelevance in a few years, due to 
the kind of infighting Debian suffered in the decade or so after Bruce's 
leadership of that project.  So it probably doesn't really _matter_.  I 
just found it ironic.

Another Fine Rant

Posted Mar 28, 2008 18:00 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Yes, yes, yes.  I gathered all that from your previous rant.  I also noticed that you admitted
-- twice now -- that you were planning to do nothing about the GPLv3 until Bruce Perens ticked
you off.  I'm having trouble imagining the Free Software Foundation trembling in fear of your
wrath, but your motivation is clearly petty spite.

Since you're wandering off topic at length I'll take the liberty of debunking two of your more
bizarre distortions.  First, characterizing Perens' activity on the BusyBox list as "advocacy"
is a stretch.  As I read it he was objecting the removal of the "or later" clause from a
project based on his original work and arguments about the merits of the GPLv3 were a side
issue.  Second, Debian has had infighting for as long as it has been around.  Consider what's
going on around dpkg for a recent example.  Laying this at the feet of Bruce Perens is silly.
For someone so concerned with what makes effective advocacy, you seem blissfully unaware of the
effect all this foaming at the mouth has on your own credibility.

On the shoulders of Perens and yet kicking his head

Posted Mar 27, 2008 1:07 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

From your link:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge tend to think that they know more than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less.

I gather that you are accusing Bruce of having little knowledge while thinking he knows a lot. I don't doubt that you have done a lot for Busybox and helped it to be a hit, but you are aware that he started the project, aren't you?

On the shoulders of Perens and yet kicking his head

Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:07 UTC (Thu) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

> I gather that you are accusing Bruce of having little knowledge while
> thinking he knows a lot.

No, I'm using the formulation that uses "skill" instead of knowledge.  
You can be a quite well-informed klutz.  Neither programmers nor lawyers 
(similar but distinct skill sets) necessarily make good good advocates 
(essentially a marketing position) or project managers.  (Heck, Transmeta 
made Linus Torvalds a manager and had people reporting to him, and by his 
own admission he sucked at it.  Open source project management and 
corporate middle management are different skills.)

Am I the only one to remember Bruce's tenure at HP?  That he was on the 
OSI board before and that the actions leading to his resignation involved 
describing Tim O'Reilley as "one of the leading parisites (sic) of the 
free software community"?  Did anyone actually read his Debian 
resignation letter (http://lwn.net/lwn/1998/0319/resign.html) in the 
context that A) none of the "more mainstream" distributions he felt 
he "should be working with" paid him any attention, and B) since then 
both Knoppix and Ubuntu have made new mainstream distributions based on 
Debian.

Looking at the past full decade of his attempts at this advocacy thing: 
he's shown much motivation, a reasonable amount of knowledge, and very 
little skill.  This has nothing to do with how well he might program.  Al 
Viro and Cristoph Hellwig are both great programmers, would either of 
them be your first choice for a public relations position?

Rob

Advocacy turned wrong

Posted Mar 27, 2008 23:57 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Oh well. That is a massive body of evidence you present: (Bruce tried to advocate for GPLv3 on a mailing list and it backfired on you, whose best man actually did threaten to kill him a decade ago. But let me point out this anecdotal piece of evidence: he has so far convinced 1820 people to sign his online petition, many of which were impartial to his particular plead (at least I know I was).

Wait, and then instead of being hired by a major distro like Ubuntu he has worked for Pixar, HP and founded several companies? What a loser!

I'm feeling this strange urge to wipe out every GPLv2-only package from my hard disk. Anybody know how to turn Debian lenny into Nexenta?... just joking.

On the shoulders of Perens and yet kicking his head

Posted Mar 30, 2008 20:10 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Can't say I agree with your tone, Rob, but I do think your message has merit.  UserLinux was
another particularly salient example.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 19:30 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

> people who work at Microsoft happen to be real people with hobbies, agendas, and merits not
dictated by their employer.

Much as we'd all love to believe that, I trust you'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical,
based on microsoft's track record.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 19:57 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Much as we'd all love to believe that, I trust you'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical, based on microsoft's track record.

This really is a problem in the standards organizations. Like OSI, many of them elect people without regard to the fact that they really may be out to represent a company agenda. But I've seen a Microsoft representative at IETF - an avowed "individual acting only for herself", with four of the assistants that came with her visible in the audience feeding questions to the discussion, and what was coming out was clearly the Microsoft line.

It's easy for people to game the process. And it's easy for others to close their eyes to it.

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 20:05 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Unless a person is willing to go ask a bunch of people who work at Microsoft about that.. that
person is only left with prebuilt decisions which are basically prejudice. 

There are over 100k Microsoft employees. In that number there are going to be people who want
Open source and people who do not. There will also be some number who are sadist, masochists,
and child molesters.. but that does not mean they all are. However, the human brain is built
to deal with large groups via prejudice (positive or negative.) It will try and label all of a
group as those they feel represents that group. 

Thus every Microsoft employee is Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates because they must be or they
wouldn't be Microsofties. And to people outside of Linux, every Linux person is some member
who they have seen on Zdnet or somewhere: Eric Raymond, Bill Perens, or these days Hans
Reiser. And if they aren't like that, they wouldn't/shouldn't use Linux.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 22:38 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I have met lots of Microsoft people, and they are mostly perfectly nice folks. They do sometimes have to take orders. The ones that are corporate climbers can be more aggressive and enthusiastic about implementing those orders - even if there's some nasty stuff involved.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 23:20 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Yes.. all people are told to follow orders at some point in time. Sometimes those orders come
from the people writing the checks, sometimes they are from the voices in ones head. Each
person gets to decide what ones they will follow, and some people are complete slime balls.
Every community gets them.. you have been vilified and threatened by some in the FLOSS
community. 

My main problem is that I find too mamy people using the Microsoft bogeyman the same way as
other 'bogeyman'. It gets an emotional reaction and turns off people's reasoning circuits and
turns on their partisan circuits. You don't get a reasoned debate about the merits of someone
after that has happened.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 23:33 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

you have been vilified and threatened by some in the FLOSS community.

Yes, but that was a long time ago, and nothing like it has happened lately. The guy who did it was eventually made to pay in a gruesome manner that I would not have wanted inflicted upon him: He was made fun of. For years.

Read this, please. I think it makes the point that MS thinks they really are at war. We really have to watch out for their trying to game the system, and warn folks when it happens.

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 20:00 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I am not saying that the executives inside of Microsoft are not out to try and keep their
monopoly at all costs. I am saying is that the implication that everyone from Microsoft is
verboten is wrong. I say this from the fact that I still get the "Oh you worked at Red Hat,
aren't they the Microsoft of Linux trying to taking away the GPL from people?" 8 years after I
left. 

No amount of explaining ever changes it for them.. and every time someone starts complaining
about companies in Linux they come out and say that Red Hat is the worst of them, blah, blah,
blah. The same for people who are anti-Novell, anti-FSF,etc. Its just that Microsoft gets the
most angry villagers. You are sure to get a whole bunch of pitchforks, torches, and angry
emails by raising the spectre that Microsoft is going to control XYZ. Heck I remember when the
rumour that Red Hat was going to be bought by Microsoft how much hate email hit the servers...
first from the Red Hat haters, and the others who hate Microsoft and thus sure that we were
all in it.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 19:58 UTC (Mon) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

My point, which perhaps I didn't make clear, was that Microsoft's employees don't (currently)
make the kind of contribution to Open Source that might get them considered for the OSI board.
That whatever contributions they make were not "substantial" enough to get that kind of
consideration.  It wasn't meant to be a bash at MS or MS employees really.

jake

bashing MS or MS employees, generally

Posted Mar 24, 2008 21:16 UTC (Mon) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

... not that there would be anything wrong with that.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 24, 2008 22:43 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Jake,

OSI has certified two Microsoft licenses. Microsoft claims that they are officially active in Open Source. So, I'm not sure you were on base at all. You also completely neglected my comment during our interview that Matt, who sets the program for OSBC, gave Microsoft the keynote speech. I had some IMO concrete reasons to be worried. Look at the farce MS is running in ISO, which is all about ballot-box manipulation of organizations.

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:14 UTC (Tue) by sergey (guest, #31763) [Link]

First of all, IANAL, but I try to follow legal matters to the best of my ability.

If these individuals were employed by a company that operates in the same industry (software,
in this case), which Microsoft does, surely they must be required to get permission from their
employer to contribute to FOSS. So, did you ask for, and receive, proof of such permission?

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 16:00 UTC (Tue) by mpgoodwin (subscriber, #33555) [Link]

I know that MS employees are requested not to dapple in Free Software, because management does
not want to run the risk of "They have taken this GPL stuff and added it to that MS product -
now it has to be open source". Of course they cannot prevent employees from participating, but
I am sure that public participation would be frowned upon.

Martin

Microsoft employee contributions to free software

Posted Mar 28, 2008 23:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

That sounds like the opposite of the "permission to dabble in Free Software" that we usually talk about. You're saying MS employees are asked not to use or look at free software, to ensure they don't steal (i.e. cause MS to steal) someone else's copyright material.

I can believe that, but this thread is about contributing to free software. Some companies don't allow that -- to the extent that employment contracts and law permit -- because they don't want to risk losing valuable intellectual property. E.g. MS wouldn't want some software that could earn MS money (developed at MS expense) going into Linux for free.

And furthermore, recipients of free software contributions often require a release from the contributor's employer so they don't have to worry about the employer coming by later, showing that the employer owns the copyright, and demanding royalties for it.

So the suggestion is that we'd be able to tell if MS employees are contributing because there would be all these formal releases around.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 26, 2008 5:57 UTC (Wed) by jhs (guest, #12429) [Link]

Microsoft releases IronPython, IronRuby, and their common platform the Dynamic Language Runtime under the Microsoft Public License. That license was approved by the OSI and is considered a GPL3-compatible free software license by the FSF.

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 30, 2008 3:21 UTC (Sun) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]

> Statements like that one above are exactly the point the OSI board is trying to make - it
elects people, not companies, and the people who work at Microsoft happen to be real people
with hobbies, agendas, and merits not dictated by their employer.

I'm sure there are lots of wonderful people working for Microsoft.  I'm also sure, based on
extensive evidence, that there are number of people working at Microsoft whose ethics and
goals are diametrically opposed to my own.  I'm not sure I can tell the two apart, especially
in situations where the latter are motivated to impersonate the former.  (It's not like the MS
salespeople show up to companies, the ISO, etc. and say "hi, we're here to illegally abuse our
monopoly, can you help?")

Besides which, probably most of the people at Microsoft, like most people everywhere, fall
somewhere in between those two extremes: they're more or less reliable on different issues in
different situations.  And it's rather common that someone with the best of intentions finds
themselves in a situation where acting on those intentions ends up playing into some larger,
negative outcome.  Microsoft as a company again has a long history of taking advantage of such
situations.

So it's quite possible to believe that there exist great people working at Microsoft, and
simultaneously be deeply suspicious of the idea of MS employees serving in any kind of F/OSS
leadership position.