[Namaste-dev] Re: Weekly Plan June 2 - June 6

[Bruce Perens]

I apologize for coming into the middle of an ongoing discussion. I was 
copied on two messages today because I have recently "carried the flag" 
for Open Standards and Open Source within AMSAT and TAPR. I've promoted 
these things outside of AMSAT for more than a decade.

I know several of the members listed on the Namaste web site. I believe 
many of them, perhaps most, would expect the set of rights defined by 
the OSD as a _minimum_ requirement for the investment of their 
participation.

We have seen a number of projects fail because they were held too close 
- as valuable intellectual property - to encourage the participation of 
all of the individuals, organizations, and companies that could have 
kept those projects afloat. At the same time, developers have a 
well-justified fear of commercial entities running away with the 
project, without any consideration of the developer's investment into 
that project. The existing Open Source licenses and the OHL try to 
strike a balance between those two perspectives.

Paul makes a good point about openness of process. This is so well 
accepted as an obviously good thing that it is taken for granted among 
open standards organizations and open source projects today.

I haven't heard any "argument against" yet. Is there any such argument, 
or was it always the fact that the obvious result of this discussion was 
going to be "Of course, we'll be wide open".

    Thanks

    Bruce K6BP