> Without history it's not clear weather these were OSI approved before revision.
OSI has history. All licenses approved by OSI are either on the current list [0] or the superceded list (where the originator of the OSI-approved licenses has indicated it should not be used for new work) [1].
I don't think simply checking that the license is "OSI approved" gives you many legal guarantees. There are currently 83 "OSI approved" licenses containing a variety of terms, from aggressively copyleft to extremely permissive: https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
Is this really worth throwing a hissy fit over? The OSI list alone is quite broad [1]. I see many licenses there that do not restrict inclusion of code in commercial products.
Speaking of license options, even if you decide to release all your code as open source, there are so many options to choose from. I counted 116 different open source licenses that are currently 'blessed' by OSI: https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
How do you pick the 'right one' for your project that you won't regret later on?
Still, be cautious. The OSI has approved a number of bad licenses. The UPL (https://opensource.org/licenses/UPL) stands out to me as one that should've been rejected.
There's a number of other reasons the OSI doesn't approve licenses, such as avoiding license proliferation https://opensource.org/proliferation . As a simple example, there are a huge number of variants of the 4-clause BSD licenses where the advertising clause lists more and more people besides the University of California; they're all open-source licenses under the Open Source Definition, but the OSI isn't interested in promoting them, because including all of those advertising clauses is a pain.
I think this post is not claiming that the license is (yet) approved by OSI, but it is claiming that it's an open source license under the OSD.
It tends to be a spectrum, but the various, sometimes very different licenses adopted by the OSI still have something in common - the open source values laid out in the Open Source Definition. [1]
SSPL did not comply with this requirement, as it discriminate against specific users or use cases. I think it is in the interest of everyone to draw the line somewhere.
OSI maintains a list of open source licenses which is as close to an industry consensus as you'll find. If a license is on that list I don't think many would say it's not open source.
Well, pseudo-open source licenses. They're certainly not OSI approved, which is the benchmark most go by. And it's not really a "lot," in part because most organizations won't touch open source software that isn't on a usually fairly short list of licenses approved for use.
Maybe there should be an organized effort to make some sort of compatibility matrix for all the OSI licenses...
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