> Times have changed.  Open source is no longer a matter for freaky
> wide-eyed heretics or for hackers doing work for free that they don't
> want to bother trying to sell.  Open source no longer needs the promotion
> that is the  strong suit of OSI, FSF, and Debian.  Open source is now
> a serious legal phenomenen, and accordingly we need to start bringing
> in the pros.  The important issues now are things like *effective*
> open source licenses and adjusting the legal systems themselves to have
> a place for open source. Thus, I'm much more interested nowadays in what
> the likes of Lawrence Lessig have to say than in what Debian,
> OSI, or FSF have to say.  If these latter organizations want to stay 
> relevant in the area of open-source ideas, then they need to adjust to 
> the changing times.  Like it or not, real law hacking requires real law
> hackers, not computer scientists who have taken a class or two on law.

Hmmm...  I will note that Lawrence Lessig is on the board of directors
of the FSF.  There is some serious legal talent on board.

And at least in the case of the GFDL, I think Debian has made the right
call (I'm not very familiar with the other cases).  The interaction of
trademark law with the "invariant sections" part of the GFDL can cause a
document to become unusable in other contexts, presenting a raft of
problems, either for reuse of code, or when forking a project, which
sometimes becomes necessary.  I know I was motivated to send mail to
Eben Moglen on this point when I realized it, and chatted with Brad Kuhn
about it; the FSF is aware that many people have problems with that
license.

One of the biggest issues right now is the fact that there are too many
licenses, many/most of which are not well thought through.  The
combinatorial explosion when mixing code is becoming intractable, and
many people are working to reduce the number of open source licenses in
use.

				Regards,
				- Jim Gettys