A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 19:53 UTC (Wed) by mattflaschen (guest, #45185)
In reply to: A think tank's view of free software by BrucePerens
Parent article: A think tank's view of free software

I think this should be emphasized. The key line in the report for me is: "This makes OSI the official keeper of the open source brand. However, many in the commercial open source world believe that their needs and concerns are not adequately represented on the OSI board." I interpret this (based on this report, but also the OSI mailing list traffic of late) to mean the group of companies approximately equivalent to DLA Piper and the Open Solutions Alliance (http://www.opensolutionsalliance.org/) may be considering co-opting the Open Source Initiative (and thus the Open Source Definition)'s role in arbiting the meaning of "open source". Already, SugarCRM and other companies are describing the MPL+Exhibit B license (e.g. http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/SPL) as "open source" even though it has not been approved by OSI and on the face seems clearly non-compliant. I would ask that people use open source to mean the licenses (http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html) approved by OSI. Remember, we're the market they want to decide.