Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:55:19 -0500
I am the attorney at Intel Corporation responsible for Intel's legal
practices and policies relating to open source.

 

Intel has been studying internally the issue of license proliferation.
One step Intel would like to take to reduce license proliferation (both
internally, and externally, to Intel) is to have the "Intel Open Source
License" (aka "BSD License with Export Notice"
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/intel-open-source-license.php )
removed from future use as an approved OSI open source license.

 

It does not appear that the Intel Open Source License has found much use
(there approximately 25 projects on SourceForge using the license, most
of which appear to have been able to use just the plain BSD license
without an export notice) and therefore Intel believes the lntel Open
Source License could be removed from the approved list without causing
significant problems.  We do however, think that the "de-approval" of
this license should not be retroactive to past uses, since we do not
wish to force companies (including Intel) and individuals to have to go
through the trouble of re-licensing code they may have released in the
past under Intel Open Source License when it was an OSI-approved
license.  Perhaps a solution would be to categorize this license as
"obsolete for future use" or something like that.

 

I hadn't seen anyone on the mailing list make this sort of request
before so this may be a new idea that OSI hasn't ever done.  If you have
any questions on this particular request or need more information, feel
free to contact me via the license-discuss list (to which I am now
subscribed).

 

McCoy Smith

Intel Corporation

Legal Department

mccoy.smith@intel.com