Announcing Copyleft Correspondence! (was Re: Do we still need weak copyleft?)

[Bradley M. Kühn]

Meanwhile …

I wrote a few minutes ago:
> I'm working on an essay that talks about the questions of copyleft
> compatibility¹ …
> … ¹ See email in reply to this one.

I guess this is as good a time as any to explain my logistical idea
(that I've discussed with Richard⁴ at length).

Our plan is to publish a series of essays called “Copyleft
Correspondence” — in which copyleft thinkers can publish ideas for
what copyleft-next should do, how it should work, and new approaches
to how copyleft works (or should work) in general.

We (Richard and I) would be open to guest essays as well — but, as
co-editors-in-chief, we'll need to review them first (and we would of
course do that⁴ on public in the mailing list here).

We hope that Copyleft Correspondence can become a series of
pre-drafting essays.  I have often said that a FOSS license serves as
the “Constitution of the Community” for FOSS projects.  Thus, I think
of the Copyleft Correspondence like the Federalist⁵ Papers — if they
were published *before* drafting of the USA Constitution instead of
*after*.

(Of course, we hope to continue in the tradition of the USA
Constitution thereafter and publish Copyleft-*Next* Correspondence
*after* copyleft-next 1.0 is released.  We think this'll be much
better than the “Rationale Document” process of GPLv3.)


⁴ I remind everyone that logistical discussions about how we might
  run the project are not “substantive discussions” about
  copyleft-next are not HBR issues.  We've been trolled on that issue
  recently, so I just wanna put a fine point on it.

⁵ Richard and I otherwise want to avoid the term “federalist”.  While
  during the late 18ᵗʰ century, the term simply spoke about
  centralizing the national state into a single document of rights
  and organization, the term has a different political meaning now.
  We settled on calling it “Correspondence” to make it clear these
  are just the ideas that folks are having — written up formally into
  essays and position papers, and curated for consideration.
--
     -- bkühn — On Fediverse (via Mastodon): https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn