Free and Open License

There is often a lot of discussion about whether something is "open" or not.

It would be clearer to borrow a phrase from the OSMF contributor terms and speak of things that are available under a "free and open license".

There are two well-established bodies which define and approve open licenses. The OKFN does this for open data licenses (like CC-BY-SA, GFDL etc.). Their list of open licenses is here:

http://opendefinition.org/licenses/

The OSI does the same for software licenses, and their list is here:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses

It is suggested to use the term "free and open license" for any license present in one of these lists. Other licenses not in these lists may of course be "free and open" as well, just not approved by the respective body.