Eric Raymond wrote a blog post about the Lerna license, the license I commented upon yesterday in my post When Licenses Discriminate. Eric says non-discrimination is a core value of Open Source, which of course I agree with.
Eric takes it a bit over the top, though. He writes “Lerna has defected from the open-source community and should be shunned by anyone who values the health of that community.” Yes, over the top.
It’s OK to create a non-Open-Source paradigm. Lots of people do so, including me. Just don’t call it Open Source. Lerna, for a day, wasn’t an Open Source project. Contributors who didn’t approve the license change also had their copyrights infringed, but that’s been taken care of because the license change has already been backed out and Lerna is back to being an Open Source project.
It’s true these non-Open-Source paradigms are often boring and non-productive, but people have a right to waste their own time on what they wish.
It also seems over the top that the Lerna project expelled the developer behind the license change. If the developer wanted to leave, fine, but if the developer was willing to stay with the project without this change, expulsion seems over the top.
We can follow the ethos of Open Source perfectly, without being draconian. Please try to do so.