Why limit the pledge to OSI-approved licences?

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

To be frank about how OSI-approved wound up in there, I just figured that
list would be the least controversial.

I briefly considered that perhaps copyleft-only made sense, which I'd be
glad to discuss.  The issue with non-copyleft works is that they could be
incorporated legitimately into proprietary products, which might compete
with the proprietary products of the company sending the takedown notice.

Heiki Lõhmus wrote:
>> Developers less versed in copyright questions or simply deeply opposed to
>> copyright expansionism may also distribute Free Software with an informal
>> statement along the lines of "all rights disclaimed" or "released into
>> the public domain".

I do think we could and should limit to software licensed under a standard
FOSS license "somehow".

Heiki wrote further:
> Free Software projects opposed to (the current state of) copyright laws
> should not be forced to adopt a licence that unequivocally affirms the
> system they oppose.

I think this is a legimate point in the general sense, but I wonder
if we make the possible license list too broad, that it's unlikely
that for-profit adopters can sign on.  I don't want to expand the
scope of the Pledge to include defining what is or is not FOSS.


Also, regarding whether to use a list: does the FSF have a license list of
its own, or do you mean the list that's maintained by the GNU project?
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him
Policy Fellow & Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy
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