[fab] Fedora as Free Software?

[Matt Domsch]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 03:37:39PM -0400, Michael Tiemann wrote:
> As FC6 planning continues apace, I'd like to make sure that we don't
> lose sight of this topic.  Is there any way we can push this forward?
> It's irritating that we have licenses that are neither free software nor
> under OSI-approved licenses.  Who is the logical point person for this?


Michael,

As I see it, there are several ways forward.  The question is, to what
extent is the OSI interested in reviewing more licenses?  The process
outlined here:  http://opensource.org/docs/certification_mark.php
requires a legal analysis from a licensed practitioner of your country
(presumably the USA for this purpose).  Of the 200ish licenses that
require some sort of review, that winds up being a lot of lawyer-hours
of work.  It's not onorous for a single submission, but for a 3rd
party group it would be.

Furthermore, it's recommended that the license owners themselves
submit to OSI to allow for conversation.
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:11493:200604:eolpbjlnpihfepiphpbd

So either we could try to get the license owners to do it (preferred),
Fedora could do it (maybe), or perhaps OSI could do it themselves.  In
both of the last cases, the legal review costs would be significant.
In the first, we'd have to convince the package owner it's worth their
time/effort/money to do so as well (oh, and hurry up so we can make
the announcement at FC6 launch...) :-)

-Matt