Bruce Perens quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new data-sharing crypto license

guest · Jan 4, 2020

Bruce Perens quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new data-sharing crypto license: 'We've gone the wrong way with licensing'
Distributed app platform's proposed agreement 'isn't freedom respecting,' he says
January 3, 2020
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/03/osi_cofounder_resigns/

Last year, lawyer Van Lindberg drafted a software license called the Cryptographic Autonomy License (CAL) on behalf of distributed development platform Holo – and submitted it to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for approval as an Open Source Definition-compliant (OSD) license.

The debate over whether or not to approve the license, now in its fourth draft, has proven contentious enough to prompt OSI co-founder Bruce Perens to resign from the organization, for a second time, based on concern that OSI members have already made up their minds.

"Well, it seems to me that the organization is rather enthusiastically headed toward accepting a license that isn't freedom respecting," Perens wrote in a missive to the OSI's license review mailing list on Thursday. "Fine, do it without me, please."
Perens, for what it's worth, drafted the original OSD.
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There are more than 100 such licenses, he said, and having that many is harmful to the community because when you combine software with multiple licenses, that creates a legal burden.

"Most people who develop open source don't have access to lawyers," he said. "One of the goals for open source was you could use it without having to hire a lawyer.

"We've gone the wrong way with licensing," he said, citing the proliferation of software licenses. He believes just three are necessary, AGPLv3, the LGPLv3, and Apache v2.
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Bruce Perens quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new data-sharing crypto license

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