OSI Board Meeting Minutes, September 12, 2005

Attendees:

  • Mr. Michael Tiemann, President and Director
  • Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary/Treasurer and Director
  • Mr. Russ Nelson, Director
  • Mr. Ken Coar, Director
  • Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
  • Mr. Bruno Souza, Director (@ 11:25 AM EDT)
  • Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director (@ 11:15 AM EDT)
  • Ms. Laura Majerus, Legal Affairs
  • Mr. Eric Raymond, Founder and Director Emeritus

Not Attending

  • Mr. Ernie Prabhakar, Board Observer

Meeting Called to Order with a Quorum at 11:15am EDT

Agenda:

  • 0. Calling Quorum
  • 1. Three New Criteria
  • 2. Voting on Licenses

1. Three New Criteria

  • a. Uniqueness
  • b. Re-useable
  • c. Readibility

Admit we didn’t do a good job of building support for the 3 additional tests. Craft a plan to build acceptance now. Question of whether they should be in the OSD…

  • Mr. Brian Behlendorf, former OSI Board member has said he wants them to be more clear if they go in.
  • Mr. Radcliffe says we can establish any criteria we want to.
  • Mr. Coar is worried about appearing arbitrary.
  • Mr. Tiemann wants to train License-Discuss to apply these qualities.
  • Mr. Raymond wants to apply them rigorously.
  • Mr. Ghosh wants to let License Proliferation take up the application of the "Three Qualities" as separate from the application of the OSD.

Mr. Raymond is happy to have Mr. Prabhakar work on this and build consensus on License-Discuss…maybe shouldn’t be an administrative criteria but rather a recommendation to be put into "how to submit to OSI"

  • Mr. Radcliffe will find plain english guidelines we’ll propose
  • Mr. Raymond will work to get the License-Discuss community to apply the three criteria
  • Ms. Cooper add recombination to list of items to discuss in next BOD meeting
  • Mr. Raymond will drive the discussion about the procedure of how to apply the criteria with the BOD to decide on policy through email
  • Mr. Coar will be working on the website version control

2. License Approval Committee

Country-specific warranty disclaimers (OVPL the Australian one)…

  • Ms. Cooper raises code recombination issues
  • Mr. Ghosh says its only a problem in copyleft
  • Mr. Raymond would like Ms. Majerus to explain why this might be true
  • Mr. Tiemann points out that template licenses could have addendum for country-specific issues.
  • Mr. Ghosh will drive an email discussion about the recombination issue.
  • BOD will meet in future to establish further policy after discussion

Specific License Approvals

  • Mr. Nelson will make a report back to License-Discuss per these notes.

a. Fair License – modification to existing OSI approved license

  • Mr. Nelson moves that we approve, Mr. Tiemann seconds….passed by general consent

b. oxGLODE License – no text submitted

  • Mr. Nelson moves that we reject and tell how to fix, Mr. Souza seconds…passed by general consent

c. ACE License – duplicative, non-reuseable, was submitted before the extra criteria were created

  • Mr. Ghosh wants to apply the process equally (with License-Proliferation committee picking up the approbation of the license)
  • Mr. Nelson moves that we defer consideration of the license, Mr. Tiemann seconds…deferred by general consent
  • Mr. Nelson will work with them some more to try to narrow the gap

d. OZPBL – has been in the queue for a long time (10 months)

  • Mr. Nelson & Mr. Ghosh recommend that we approve it to be consistent and allow for warranty disclaimer in lieu of our future work to templatize this issue.
  • Mr. Tiemann moves that we approve it and draft a general statement about setting a policy & practice on the issue of country-specific warranty disclaimers (which, when approved, will be in the License-Submission policy and broadcast on License-Discuss), Mr. Nelson seconds…passed by general consent
  • Mr. Raymond’s draft general statement for BOD approval prior to release (Mr. Tiemann’s statement "for all those who are looking for country-specific warranty language, we would encourage them to work together to come up with a template way to solve for this general need")

e. OVPL – reasonable opportunity to defer decision against discussions with Sun to modify CDDL

  • Ms. Cooper moves that we defer pending further discussion with Sun, and that we advise the author that we’re willing to reconsider on a fast track if they manage to get to a single license or if they find that they cant, Mr. Nelson seconds…deferred by general consent

f. OVLPL – tied to OVPL, so recommend same deferment

  • Mr. Nelson moves that we defer pending further discussion with Sun, as with the OVPL above, Ms. Cooper seconds…deferred by general consent

g.The Kannel Software License, Version 1.0 – not yet enough discussion

  • Mr. Nelson moves that we defer the vote pending more discussion, Mr. Tiemann seconds…passed by general consent

h. CeCILL – Mr. Andy Wilson of Intel tried to get clarification and couldn’t (refer to the mail)

  • Mr. Nelson moves to reject because explanation of unclear terms were not clarified, Ms. Cooper seconds…rejected by general consent

i. Open-Realty License – not reusable, author was advised but has not replied

  • Mr. Tiemann moves that we reject this license on the basis of the inconsistency between the license we have and the one the author is apparently using now (per June 6th email), Ms. Cooper seconds…rejected by general consent

Meeting adjourned at 1:00PM EDT (10:00AM PDT)