Quitting OSI
Given the recent actions of OSI I’ve removed all references of OSI from websites I’m affiliated with and I’ll no longer refer to any software I’m involved with the development of as open source. It’s become clear to me now that OSI is a closed and private club. An elitist clique even. I clearly was never a part of this club. Although I had thought myself an active member and fervent evangelist of this community I obviously was not. This became clear when the OSI board clearly coached Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, on what and how to submit when he resubmitted his badgeware license, renamed CPAL. The board then approved, in a private session at OSCON this license against the wishes of the community at large. A license that is not even compatible with the most widely used free software licenses: GPL and LGPL. Also disturbing to me is the fact that Socialtext had, for as much as, four years claimed to be an open source company, but never released a single line of source code for the software they were distributing for a fee. OSI then in turn rewarded the founder and CEO of this company with coaching and the dubious honor of being the submitter (author is Mark Radcliffe see comments for interesting back story) of an OSI approved badgeware license. Absolutely bizarre. Moreover, I’ve asked that OSI create membership for many months now and also that there be some transparency to the board appointment process as well as allow for member elected board members. No progress has been made on these items. No responses were ever given to my requests. Therefore, I’m no longer interested in OSI or what it thinks about software freedom.
To those who claim the CPAL is necessary because of a lack of an Affero-like clause in GPLv3 I respond with: your concerns are only well reasoned if your product or your engineering team is so inferior such that you have no confidence in your ability to out-innovate a competitor. I too once believed Afferro to be a clause required to protect your company, but I have since come to understand that GPLv2 or v3 provide sufficient protection with copyleft and maximize the benefits and freedoms to the entire market of users, developers, and companies.
Update: I’ve had some email exchanged with Rick Moen. I really didn’t express myself very well here on the topic of Afferro. The fact is I do believe that providing software as a service remotely should require the release of source code and be considered distribution. It has always seemed strange to me that a person’s rights would differ between software running locally and that running remotely. Above, in my hastily written post I’m attempting to express my opinion about badgeware and the notion that badgeware licenses are a necessary license to provide protection to companies releasing their source code. This, in my opinion, is total crap and I have heard this said by most badgeware apologists. This only provides unfair and unnecessary constraints on software freedom. Unfair because shouldn’t then the software employing this license provide similar attribution to all the projects composing it? Wouldn’t this lead to a Nascar-esque application. It’s just silly and unnecessary.
- More about Radcliffe from a Socialtext employee
