Similar discussion list but not only for Europe?

MJ Ray mjr at phonecoop.coop
Tue Mar 10 12:03:53 UTC 2009


David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/3/9 Sam Liddicott <sam at liddicott.com>:
> > I'm puzzled - you say it is FUD; but then you seem to agree with him.
> > How is it FUD?
>
> The implication is that the OSI is not interested in software freedom
> because it disagrees with the FSF on one corner-case. This is
> historically and factually inaccurate.

Arguing about implications - in other words, arguing against things
that no-one has written and one has imagined.  That won't end well.

It's not just one corner-case: NASA, Reciprocal, Apple, Netscape...
probably others.  What does this mean?

OSI was the Open Source Initiative, an initiative to secure a
trademark on "Open Source", to market free software.  The initiative
failed, the trademark is unobtainable and OSI should have dissolved
instead of setting itself up as a bad advocacy-led mix of FSF and
debian licence review processes.

Two other things:-

FSF never claimed FDL is a FS licence.  I think it's wrong to have
manuals which aren't FS, but we disagree on what software is.  I also
think it's wrong to give obnoxious ad clause support to legacy
publishers, but FSF needs its manuals published.

Debian uses the DFSG as *guidelines* (the G), as practical checks of
whether *software* (the S) meets the free software definition.  Some
debian developers are unhappy about OSI using a minimally-modified
version the DFSG as a definition for licences instead of guidelines
for software.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237



More information about the Discussion mailing list