TLDRLegal - Linkbacks
Start/Due date: August 13, 2015 - September 13th, 2015
Working Group Chair: Kevin Wang
Working Group Sponsor: Patrick Masson
OSI General Manager: Patrick Masson
Background
Since 2012, there's been an ongoing discussion to work collaboratively between TLDRLegal & the OSI (outlined elsewhere). TLDRLegal has now reached a level of traffic, maturity, critical review and support through the Open Source ecosystem that it makes sense to move forward.
On August 13th, Kevin + the Board agreed to actively move forward with a set of activities, including linkbacks as outlined on this page.
Project Goals
The goal of this project is to direct visitors that are looking for helpful, simple community interpretations towards TLDRLegal by establishing linkbacks between summaries and their respective license pages. In terms of execution, it's important to have simple, accessible navigation while maintaining the following conditions:
- Explicit disclaimers of endorsement of content, review and sourcing of summary data
- Explicit disclaimers of legal advice
- Clear separation between TLDR & the OSI designating it as a neutral 3rd party
- No exclusive promotional relationship
Deliverables
License Page Links
We will add a link on each license page below the title in the following format:
Link text + (disclaimer link)
Examples: "View [Community] Summary of MIT License on TLDRLegal (disclaimer)"
The goal is to have a short & simple link for those that want a quick overview of the license first. Then, for those who care about the explicit relationship between OSI + TLDR, right next to it is a long, thorough & accessible disclaimer just a click away.
Mockup:
Other Resources Page + Full Disclaimer Language
Following the "(disclaimer)" link will take the user to a full page that lists other resources as well as a full disclaimer against any resources linked to on the OSI website.
Current Draft Format:
---
Other Resources:
- TLDRLegal
- GNU License List
- ChooseALicense
- ...
Disclaimer: While the OSI acknowledges these as potentially helpful resources for the community, it does not endorse any content, contributors or license interpretations from these websites. Any links to these resources across opensource.org are solely for navigational purposes. The OSI does not promote or exclusively favor any of the above resources, but instead mentions them as a neutral, separate third-party. Any content from or links to these resources are separated to the OSI, exist for purely informational purposes and creates no attorney-client relationship between you, the OSI or the resources. If you have questions about how licenses apply to you or your organization, you should seek legal advice.
---
Optional Announcement
Optionally, we can announce this mutually on both sides to pre-emptively define the OSI + TLDR's relationship so there's no confusion and explicit, forthright messaging of no-endorsement, etc...
OSI Resources & Timeline
The only resources we need are:
1. Board Approval of this plan (including disclaimer language)
2. Execution of Links on License Pages
3. (Optionally) An announcement to draft up
Kevin is happy to take over the manual work making the links when ready.
Goal Dates:
- Mon, Aug 24th - first-pass review of proposal details and begin iterations
- Fri, Sept 4th - finish iterating and freeze project plan, Kevin, Patrick or others execute link drafts
- Weds, Sept 9th - finish drafts, confirm publishing details and (optionally) draft & review announcements. Publish all by Sept 15th.
- Tues, Sept 15th - trigger has already been publically pulled on links or announcements, close this project
After the end-date of the project, Kevin & Patrick will work together to continually keep information updated, which will be covered in a separate working group proposal.
Next steps may include review of OSI-approved summaries, and etc... also covered in separate proposals.