In the most recent LugRadio, we discussed licence proliferation.
Our main conclusions were that:

licence proliferation is damaging to free software because it makes it harder to remember what rights each licence grants us
a licence picker, similar to …

Mark is right, they’re well-placed to make *the* difference, but I doubt the current “self-selected” board can get the job done.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/board.html

They should have pushed Russ Nelson all the way out, rather than allow him to remain after his ‘gaffe’ in Feb 2005. Especially now that he’s repeating it.

http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/nigger.html

(How can anyone remain on a board after repeating this kind of stunt?)

The OSI was responsible for “license proliferation” because they let Larry Rosen (a lawyer) run the show. Larry said that all licenses that ‘fit’ the “Open Source Definition” had to be allowed, else the OSI would get sued.

the OSD was the work of ESR, who … unfortunately is not a lawyer, and likely didn’t forsee the result. Still, since “open source” is a marketing campaign, *designed from the outset* to defeat Free Software, I hope that Mark will take his ideas to an organization other than the OSI.

Perhaps we need a repalcement for the OSI, alligned with the Creative Commons folk. Invite Lessig and the EFF and perhaps 2-3 other parties. Make a new CC-style license for software.

The license proliferation commiteee’s report iis at http://opensource.org/lpc/
The report’s FAQ (including a linked list of licenses) is at http://opensource.org/lpc/faq.php

Re your “driver of fragmentation”, what do you think we should do when somebody comes to us with a license that complies with the Open Source Definition? I think we have to approve the license and list it on opensource.org. The alternative is to have people running around saying “Our license is Open Source and complies with the OSD even though OSI doesn’t approve or list it.” If people do that, then we have given up our role as arbiter of what is Open Source and what is not.

1. We also have a License Wizard project, which was announced at OSCON and is being developed by Dr. Sameer Verma of San Francisco State University (who was one of the first professors to introduce a full curriculum on Free and Open Source Software). Next draft of the software is scheduled to be posted in December 2006. Dr. Verma is also running a project on SourceForge to host the source code behind the wizard engine, which will be useful for any branched decision-making tree. You can contact Dr. Verma at sverma@sfsu.edu

2. Our website is indeed a “mess”. Even we think so. Its also hard-coded as heck, and very difficult to maintain. We’ve been working for a couple of months on a migration of content to a new, better organized Drupal-driven site, which we intend to unveil in late November 2006.

3. Recommendations in re License Proliferation have been published to the License Proliferation Team (and are informing Dr. Verma’s License Wizard as well). They are scheduled for Board consideration as soon as the committee votes to send them to the Board. A lot of people worked a long time on the recommendations, and one of the side benefits is that as a result of that work there have been several “retirements” of corporate vanity licenses which helps to reduce the number of licenses to consider. We’ve also seen a marked drop in the number of new licenses. People seem to be getting the idea that writing new licenses is generally not a good idea. Another part of the OSI’s work on License Proliferation has been participation in an attempt to craft a “common license framework” between Sun, Apple and Mozilla, all of which use an MPL-style license. In short, there’s a lot going on.