Nigel T <[email protected]>:
> There is a significant difference between deprecating and decertification.
>
> A deprecated api can still be used. One removed (aka decertified) cannot.
>
> The bar for decertification should be exceedingly high.
>
> And how is “bad” decided? Is the limited patent clause in ECL v2 “bad”
> because it doesn’t go far enough? This this form of “bad” sufficient for
> deprecation or even decertification?
>
> Should all licenses without an explicit unlimited patent clause be
> “decertified” as “open source”?
>
> Deprecation is less damaging although deprecating a license with a
> significant community is unnecessarily divisive especially when these kinds
> of decisions are often the result of a small but vocal group more interested
> in ideological purity than access to code.
>
> Frankly even deprecation should require more than a simple board vote behind
> closed doors.
>
> De-certification even more so.
>
> You’re voting people off the open source island when decertifying. It should
> be a long, arduous process requiring many checks.
Before you worry too much about zealotry, maybe you should wait to see
what licenses people choose to try tio deprecate. I don't look at OSI
and see a collection of ideological nutcases; I am *not* worried.
If you want to be a conservative, anti-decertification voice in these
debates, go to it. Somebody ought to be. I don't anticipate myself
taking an extreme strance in either direction.
There are a lot of licenses I would like to see deprecated, but I
can't yet think of one I would instantly decertify.
Personally, I have kind of seized on deprecation as a concept because of cases
like...oh, the PNG Reference Library License. A perfectly sound and
conformant license that I wouldn't dream of decertifying, but we'd
all be better off if nobody ever used it again, adopting instead some
common license wuth a better-developed interpretive tradition.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
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