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February 2020 License-Discuss Summary

Submitted by travinkeith on Mon, 2020-07-20 19:22

In February, the License-Discuss mailing list discussed the OSD and compulsory user reporting, the delisting of licenses, the MIT-Clone and conern on the copyright notice, GDPR/CCPA and the Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4), the CERN Open Hardware License 2.0, Ethical Open Source Licensing – Persona non Grata Preamble, Fairness vs Mission Objectives of the OSI, ethical open source licensing - Dual Licensing for Justice, discouraging governments from creating bespoke licenses, and the psychological relationship between an author and the work. 

OASIS Open Joins Open Source Initiative

Submitted by administrator on Tue, 2020-06-30 07:00

Shared vision and combined resources extend both organizations’ ability to advance open source through standards.

OASIS Open Logo

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 30, 2020 -- The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the internationally recognized steward of the Open Source Definition and open source licenses, is excited to announce the Affiliate Membership of OASIS Open, a global nonprofit consortium managing a broad technical agenda encompassing cybersecurity, blockchain, privacy, cryptography, cloud computing, IoT, urban mobility, emergency management, and other content technologies.

Celebrating GNOME's Patent Settlement

Submitted by administrator on Thu, 2020-06-11 09:00

Fireworks

The Open Source Initiative would like to congratulate the GNOME Foundation on its recent settlement of the patent lawsuit alleging that the Shotwell software infringed patents owned by Rothschild Patent Imaging. The settlement was a huge achievement -- not only did GNOME pay nothing, but Rothschild Patent Imaging and its owner, Leigh M. Rothschild, have agreed that, for all of their patents and future patents, they will not sue any user or developer of software under an Open Source Initiative-approved license (and their updated versions) where the software forms a material part of the infringement allegation. That is freedom from suit for the open source software world for over 100 patents.

State of the Source Summit

Submitted by administrator on Thu, 2020-06-11 07:00

SotS Header

A World-wide Open Source Summit: Build your local community, while engaging the global community.

The State of the Source Summit invites open source communities of practice from around the world to organize and contribute to a global conversation on the current state of open source software: non-technical issues that foster development and community, the licenses that enable collaboration, the practices that promote contribution, and the issues confronting cooperation.

Conference Goals

  • Share the current state of open source licenses: understanding their value and impediments to further adoption.
  • Identify current, non-technical, issues affecting open source software, development, and communities through the lenses of developers, companies, and projects.
  • Conceptualize and plan for what the future may hold for open source software as a community and the Open Source Initiative as an organization.

OpenJS Foundation Joins Open Source Initiative as Newest Affiliate Member

Submitted by administrator on Tue, 2020-06-09 06:06

Membership emphasizes growing outreach and engagement with broader software and technology communities.

OpenJS Logo

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 9, 2020 -- The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the international authority in open source licensing, is excited to announce the affiliate membership of the OpenJS Foundation, the premier home for critical open source JavaScript projects, including Appium, Dojo, jQuery, Node.js, and webpack, and 30 more. The OpenJS membership with the OSI highlights the incredible impact of JavaScript across all industries, web technologies, communities, and, ultimately, the open source software movement.

Charting a Course for 2020 and Beyond

Submitted by Josh Simmons on Mon, 2020-06-01 09:26

A Compass

This is an interesting time for open source.

An approach to intellectual property that was once seen as radical is now mainstream. In 2011, 13 years after "open source" was coined and the Open Source Initiative was founded to promote and protect it, O'Reilly Media declared that open source had won. In 2016, WIRED followed suit. Now, open source undergirds software development across a truly unfathomable range of applications and fans the flames of other open culture movements. It has inspired new ways of collaborating with each other, experiments in community governance, and has been so successful that it is colloquially taken to mean all of the above.

And yet, open source feels so tenuous sometimes. Questions dog us. Setting aside run-of-the-mill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, people are raising legitimate questions: are our projects sustainable? Are our communities safe and healthy? Are maintainers being treated fairly? Is our work just? Can open source weather continued attempts at redefinition?

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