The OSI/SPI situation (was Re: [DRAFT 3]: Charter for the Open Source Committee)

graydon at pobox.com graydon at pobox.com
Tue Nov 9 04:22:06 UTC 1999


Hi.  

As a bit of an outsider (well, not _too_ far outside) looking into
this process, it's clear to me that OSI and SPI have had some fights,
and so everyone is pissed off and accusatory, which makes any sort of
sane monitoring of what's going on a little tricky. You have to cut
through a lot of noise of people blaming each other for debacles,
crises, boondoggles, and other highly political and pointless turns of
phrase.

I was wondering if everyone could chill out and forgive the past for
long enough to give precise (short; please please short) answers to
some questions:

(1) What kind of a legal entity / organization is OSI? It says on the
    website that it is a nonprofit seeking 501(c)3 in California. What
    does this mean, particularly outside Cali? How is it legally or
    financially related to SPI?

(2) Has anyone outside OSI (who, forgive the implication, have a
    vested intrest) confirmed that the "Open Source" trademark is non
    enforceable?

(3) Has the Open Source trademark, in its legally registered form
    (enforceable or not) lapsed, as in timed out, as in 
    no-longer-exists? Or does anyone have a piece of paper somewhere
    which says "Bobo owns the trademark 'Open Source'". If so, who is
    Bobo? And what is the juristiction of the trademark?

(4) whois says Darren and Martin are contacts for the domain
    opensource.(org|net), whereas Bruce and Tim are contacts for
    open-source.(org|net). Who is on which board, and who is trying to
    hold/transfer which domain(s)? It sounds like there's some
    disagreement on this too. Who here actually feels like it's
    "their" domain and they should be the contacts? Everyone? Why do
    they feel this way? Do they have any legal grounds for this
    feeling? This probably depends a little on #1, doesn't it? Does
    anyone here know enough Domain Name Law" to know which of the 2
    organizations can hold claim to which names? (remember, short
    answers)

(5) OSI was, by SPI's (self-interested) telling, established to
    monitor the Open Source trademark, which SPI owns. OSI claims
    (truthfully or not) that this trademark is defunct, and is now
    certifying software using the "OSI Certified Open Source"
    certification mark. At this point, is OSI effectively saying that
    they (the board members) do not want to have anything to do with
    the SPI board members anymore? If so, why not just say so? What is
    tying the two groups together if they disagree, goodwill? In other
    words, how is any of this different from me going out and making a
    Funky Software Initiative, and beginning to certify things
    Certifiably Funky Open Source? Certainly SPI would not have
    anything to do with that -- why is OSI any different anymore? Is
    is it just the domain name?

(6) out of curiosity: does SPI have any plans on forking another group
    to certify things, assuming that OSI's certifications are not
    agreeable? Or is OSI doing right by SPI these days? If not, is
    there any legal or financial recourse?

Sorry, I know these are probably heated questions for some, but
untangling politics is excruciatingly slow going, and I'm just trying
to work out what's happening. Please don't take this as fuel for
flames. I just want to get a picture of the current situation as each
group sees it.

-graydon



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