[PROPOSAL] Open Source certification

[Richard Bullington]

On 11 Apr 1999, Russell Nelson wrote:

> Lynn Winebarger writes:
>  > Frankly, though, given the attitudes evinced publicly by ESR and
>  > yourself (here), it's not clear to me that letting the situation
>  > remain as is is a worthwhile tradeoff for avoiding the spectacle of
>  > a dispute over the mark.
> 
> Been there, done that, it wasn't worth it.  Ask the SPI board for the
> URL to the results of the community consultation performed last year
> (I don't know the URL).  Basically the results were "SPI looks like a
> bunch of idiots", "OSI looks like a bunch of idiots", and "SPI and OSI
> look like a bunch of idiots".

I find it interesting that you've seen this, yet the "open" SPI hasn't
published the results of this consultation as they promised.

I sure hope that SPI updats their web pages soon, and at the very least
removes the invitation to comment on the trademark dispute
<http://www.spi-inc.org/news/1998/19981124>.  It would be a courtesy to
the public whoose coments SPI solicited to publish the comments, or at
least a summary, even if it is "People thought the dispute was damaging.
They disagreed about what we should do." 

Not only has the dispute made both SPI and OSI look bad, but it has also
hurt the term "Open Source". I believe in both the philosophical
superiority of free software, and the business benefits of open
source software. In the best case, the two create an intertwining
synergy that has the potential to reshape the software world.
I'd like to be able to use the term "Open Source" without someone jumping
down my throat about the dispute. The continuing lethargy of SPI's
response to this is hurting everyone involved.


----
 Richard L. Bullington III  <rbulling at microstate.com>
 Chief Technology Officer, The Microstate Corporation
 Phone: 703-591-9797  URL: http://www.microstate.com/
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