[od-discuss] OD Proliferation Policy

Mon Jun 24 00:37:10 UTC 2013

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 6:55 AM, Kent Mewhort <kent at openissues.ca> wrote:
> On 13-06-18 07:15 AM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>
> There are actually two things here
> * Tweaking http://opendefinition.org/licenses/process/ to emphasize
> explanation of motivation and why another license needed; relatively
> easy -- any suggested edits?
>
> Perhaps:
> (-) 3. State the rationale for the new license.
> (+) 3. Think about license proliferation [link to another page with info].
> Explain the rationale for the new licence.
> State the rationale for the new license
> State the rationale for the new license.
> State the rationale for the new license.
>
> * Tweaking http://opendefinition.org/licenses/ to recategorize and
> recommend some licenses over others (beyond the easy old/deprecated
> distinction now made) -- any proposals?
>
> My first stab would be:
>  - Recommended
>  - Not recommended
>    - Superseded
>    - Non-reusable
>    - Specialized (for a narrow purpose / range of uses)

I'm quite skeptical about most of OSI's "specialized" licenses, to be
honest. I would not recommend having it as an OD category without good
reason- better, where possible, to reject most such licenses.

> This would basically be a slight simplification of the OSI categories.
> Interestingly, it seems OSI chose to avoid Recommended / Not recommended so
> as to not tread into policy territory  -- from
> http://opensource.org/proliferation-report:

Not just policy, but politics. Nothing would make this process more
miserable more quickly than having people lobby us about non-objective
criteria. OSI has come perilously close to that road before; I really
don't recommend it.

Some reasonably objective non-proliferation ("recommendation"?)
criteria that would probably be useful in this context:
- public drafting process (e.g., conducted on a public communication
forum of some sort; multiple drafts presented to that forum) (not sure
how many of the current licenses would pass this text- maybe just CC?)
- non-specificity (i.e., not specific to a particular
place/jurisdiction/organization)
- as suggested in the thread, require clearly articulated reasons for
a new license when the license is submitted. Hard to objectively
evaluate these once they are written, of course, but at least having
them written down is a start.

Luis