[OSGeo-Edu] Is this license ok? if so will switch this week

[P Kishor]

Sorry, I came late to the party. This thread underscores a very
important point -- clarity of vision not just in our (OSGeo's) mind
but also how we convey that vision to others.

OSGeo's website does a pretty nice job of stating what the
foundation's preferred licensing regime is (see
<https://www.osgeo.org/content/faq/foundation_faq.html#Open_Source>,
but perhaps it needs to be even clearer.

The frequent source of confusion is the tension between "free,"
"commercial," and "proprietary." This license business is messy and
chaotic, and frankly, a huge turn-off. For most part, general public
doesn't care even to read the license, let alone understand and act on
it. The more we can do to make it easy and simple for the creators of
material to understand and use the license, the better it is going to
be for us and the community.

The edu committee can definitely speak to the quality of a course
offering, but what kind of license it should carry in order to be
blessed by the foundation, well, that is really the Board's reckoning.

The two days last week at the Science Commons conference did not
really do much to clear the smoke, although there was some attempt to
tackle various other problems that impede data sharing. Licensing was
really not addressed. Nevertheless, CC seems to have a lot of momentum
behind it, and has done some work at simplifying understanding,
choosing, and applying a license. Perhaps OSGeo could take a few pages
from that book.

On a separate note: my calendar tells me that we are scheduled to IRC
chat in about 7 hours (UTC (or GMT/Zulu)-time: Friday, October 13,
2006 at 13:00:00). I have a meeting conflict that will likely keep me
from coming online although I will try. In any case, I will catch up
via the IRC logs.


On 10/12/06, Arnulf Christl <arnulf.christl at ccgis.de> wrote:
>
> On Tue, October 10, 2006 21:33, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> > Hi Gary,
> >  From my perspective I think this is a good idea.  Using this
> > recognised license is preferred to something custom, its meaning and
> > intent are laid out quite well.
> >
> > Tyler
>
> Hi,
> sorry for being such a drop out after having started this discussion, I am
> busy at the Intergeo fair and will need some time to sort things out
> again.
>
> Maybe Rich has another opinion on this topic, I know he is not a friend of
> the FDL and we need all kinds of input to eventually come up with a
> comprehensive solution. Or maybe just go broadly inclusive and look at how
> the different options develop.
>
> :-)
>
> Best regards,
> Arnulf.
>
> > On 9-Oct-06, at 11:54 AM, Gary Watry wrote:
> >
> >>              GNU Free Documentation License
> >>                Version 1.2, November 2002
> >>
> >>
..
-- 
Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/
Nelson Inst. for Env. Studies, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
Open Source Geospatial Foundation https://edu.osgeo.org/