Archive for the 'Licensing' Category

Archived mailing lists

Thu, Jun 15th 2006 18:02 Posted by webmaster

As part of the migration from Plone to Wordpress and related pieces of software, the old mailing lists have been extracted from Plone and archived. Hereafter, mailing lists will be organised as follows:

ossg-committee@ossg.bcs.org
This list is used for discussing committee business. The archives are open but only committee members may join the list.
ossg-announcements@ossg.bcs.org
This is a low-traffic list used for OSSG event announcements. Posting is restricted to committee members.
ossg-members@ossg.bcs.org
A members discussion list, though we would prefer members to discuss issues using the blog comment pages.

The old mailing list archives may be found here:

Committee Forum
Committee discussion
Business
Discussion of issues surround business and open source.
Member Forum
Member event announcements
Licensing
Licensing discussion
eGovernment and Open Source
Discussion of Open Source in eGovernment
Knowledge Management and Open Source
Using open source for knowledge management
Agile Methods and Open Source
Relationship between Agile Methods and Open Source
Legal Issues surrounding Open Source
Discussion of legal issues involvng Open Source
Accessibility and Open Source
Discussion of Accessiblity in Open Source
Education and Open Source
Use of Open Source in Education

Apologies for any duplicate messages etc. The archives were produced by screen-scraping the old Plone site. Not ideal.

Open University Course

Wed, Dec 21st 2005 23:51 Posted by ros060

Just wanted to inform members of this group that the Open University is running a module on Open Source Technology; the next start date of the course …

own licence

Tue, Dec 13th 2005 12:22 Posted by ros060

if i have developed an open source software; am i allowed to write my own licence(one in which i have my own conditions). for instance, i might not agree with the wording of the various available formats of licences and would prefer to impose my own conditions on the users.
roohbir

Call to boycott OASIS Standards that are not open

Wed, May 11th 2005 16:28 Posted by markelkins

Computer Weekly (2005,01 March p.12) reports on a row between leading Open Source Developers and standards organization OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). OASIS has recently changed its rules allowing developers the right to charge royalties for contributed code.

This has met with strong disapproval from leading members of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Community including Lawrence Rosen, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Mitchell Kapor, Lawrence Lessig, Doc Searls, Tim O’Reilly, and Eric Raymond. They have all signed an email letter - a copy of this is shown at http://osdir.com/Article4278.phtml - calling for OASIS to drop its plans and to boycott any of its standards that are not open.

More about OASIS can be found on its website at http://www.oasis-open.org/who/ which amongst other detail describes itself as a not-for-profit consortium that produces more web services standards than any other organization.

Lawrence Rosen has recently published a book entitled Open Source Licensing Software Freedom and Intellectual Property. An online version is available at http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm published under the Academic Free Licence version 2.1.

Mark Elkins

BCS OS Licence

Wed, Apr 13th 2005 10:40 Posted by mikendall

I was looking at the state of OS Licences (IANAL)
and concluded that it would be useful to the
OS community if the BCS itself operated an OS Licence.

If it good enough for the The Regents of the University of California,
then why not for the BCS itself?

Advantages:
1) Open Source licencing has matured. The principles and pitfalls
are better understood. The BCS can offer a good licence.

2) The BCS can offer protection from a perceived problem with
current licences - the ability to transfer copyright and then
revoke the openness (Estoppel not withstanding).

3) The BCS would be an ideal home for the copyright for national UK
OS projects e.g. Health, Local Government, Defence, Transport.

Disadvantages:
1) The BCS charter may prevent it.
2) The BCS board may not like it.

Both disadvantages are not immutable, though they may take time to resolve.

Malcolm Kendall

Disclaimer: Comments and posts are owned by their authors and the views therein are not necessarily those of the Open Source Specialist Group or the BCS.