[jdev] Re: Re: JOSL 1.1?

[Peter Saint-Andre]

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 02:53:53 -0400, Justin wrote:

> Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> 
> 
>>It seems there are two issues here:
>>
>>1. Code ownership / stewardship
>>  
>>  
> jabberstudio.org anyone?  Yeah, its not 'officially' part of the JSF, but
> for all intents and purposes it is. This is a bit of an odd issue, that
> really doesn't make much sense.
> 
> Under what OSI approved license, can the licensee's right to use the
> software be revoke if the licensee is not violating any of the license
> terms? (was that parsable?)

Not by me. Perhaps I need to upgrade my English parser.
 
> Given recent headlines over the past few months, will the JSF offer
> indemnification of said code?

Does the FSF indemnify all the code entrusted to it?

> If the JSF is going to start owning large amounts of pseudo-high risk IP,
> then it should be dealt with like a lamb approaching a lion.

?

> IMO, the JSF should not become a source code escrow manager.

Why not? I'm not pushing for that, but I'm curious about your reasoning.

>>2. Code licensing / terms of use
>>  
>>  
> Just make the license be OSI approved. Done, end of story.

Naturally.

>>I really meant to raise issue #1. Is there a legitimate role for the JSF
>>as a trusted third party for open-source code developed in the Jabber
>>community? It seems to me that the JSF could do this no matter what the
>>code license (terms of use) is.
>>  
>>  
> I think this has passed the risk/liability threshold. Claiming ownership
> of IP that someone else created is asking for problems we are ill equipped
> to deal with.

It's not so much a question of ownership as of stewardship. People entrust
their GPL'd code to the FSF all the time (look at the jabberd2 code etc.)
but in my experience with code theft, that does not especially seem to
have helped those whose GPL'd code was stolen. Others on this list may
have different or better experiences.

>>A subsidiary issue is whether we might want to develop JOSL 1.1 as one
>>license that would enable the JSF to function as what Larry Lessig calls
>>an "intellectual property conservancy".
>>  
>>  
> Will Larry Lessig do pro-bono work for the JSF?

Maybe. ;-)

/psa