On March 16, 2019 7:59:57 AM UTC, Keith Z-G keithzg@gmail.com wrote:
the point *I* was making at least was that this other license being talked about here does not follow the public drafting philosophy of copyleft-next; [...] You might argue that this is actually the correct way to draft a license. You might even be right! But that isn't the spirit and principle in which copyleft-next has been drafted, and so from that aspect alone it would seem foolish to try and combine these efforts.
There are several political and technical reasons that make the Blue Oak Model License and copyleft-next incompatible, rather than philosophy and processes.
AFAIK the attempt to draw at both copyright law and contract law without a signed agreement sound somewhat fragile under civil law. At least in Europe, copyright violations are penal crimes, and that's why it doesn't mix easily with contracts.
The HBR is just a form of intellectual surveillance that pretend to produce trasparency.
I'm not entirely certain what you're trying to say here, although I am sure I disagree.
So you don't know what you disagree with? :-D
What I mean is simple: by requiring that ALL discussions on a license is made public (while being unable to actually enforce that), you subdue the discussion itself to power dynamics that favor powerful players able to bypass the rule and influence the public discussion towards their goal.
Guess what? That's the whole goal of surveillance.
Or to turn it around: why *shouldn't* the drafting process of a license be as open as the development process of the software that is to be licensed under it?
You seem confused about how Free Software is developed.
Few projects have a democratic direction. Most open source projects pretend to, but are actually lead by corporate interests. The vast majority are small programs developed by one single developer. Some are lead by small teams (usually with very few strong leaders within).
And if we're (perhaps rightfully) worried about a future in which centralized yet ubiquitous private actors like Google, Facebook, etc have too much power, why would we not aspire to produce the legal framework for software aligned against those interests in as forthright and honest of a way as possible?
:-D There's no way that such regulation can emerge from a comittee that can be freely joined by how many lobbyists as required.
In practice,
- it gives power to the best influencers, instead of the best
arguments (who are the best influencers these days)
- it blur the responsibility of their decisions that are described as
collective
At least, if I write a license (or anything else) and propose it for public discussion, I put my name and credibility at stake. I take risks and fully accept the responsibility and the feedbacks.
Sure, and arguably that is what the Harvey Birdman Rule is trying to do; everyone's contributions, arguments, and positions are up for public discussion, rather than being made in secret and attributable.
Except there's no way to ensure this, so it's basically naive wishfull thinking at best.
Public collective drafting is just a process to preserve large group interests without putting their lobbists on the front line.
If we're worried about powerful interests subverting our efforts in the Free Software world and in the world in general, should not we be all the more demanding of clear and verifiable arguments and justifications behind proposed changes (to licenses, to software, to laws, etc etc), so that as an interested public we can make informed decisions and avoid being suckered into serving malignant interests?
That's simply not how human knowledge has been elaborated in the last 5000 years.
In Europe, intellectuals always conducted deep and difficults debates through carefully (and privately) written essays and treatises, signed whenever possible.
While a mailing list is an asynchronous medium that can surely support a healthy discussion, the volume and fragmentation of threads can be easily manipulated to make the whole discussion too complex to really be transparent. And side-channel agreements are always possible.
In synthesis I don’t think people can produce good licenses (or software) "by committee". Even less by open-ended committes
Instead, by discussing together texts carefully crafted in private by people who take the responsibility for them, we can go beyond the balance of interests among the players and really innovate.
It's not just a faster process: it works! ;-)
Giacomo