pruning "dead" licenses

[Fink, Martin R]

I think we do need to find a way to reduce the number of licenses.

However, I'm not sure that categorizations such as "active" and
"inactive", or "often/sometimes/rarely" is where I'd go (I could be
wrong).  I'm still thinking through this because I'd like to submit a
more formal proposal, but my brain is more around a few different areas,
such as categorizing:

"Vanity licenses"
"Single project use licenses"
"Copyleft and non-copyleft licenses"
"Corporate and community licenses"

Obviously, this is still developing.  Another thought is around license
compatibility.  Compatible licenses could be "grouped" together in some
fashion.

Yet another thought is that I'd like to think about extending the OSD to
make it more restrictive to create new licenses.

I welcome ideas, and as I develop this further, I'll see if I can
propose something a bit more formally.

Martin

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-----Original Message-----
From: Robin "Roblimo" Miller [mailto:robin at roblimo.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 7:54 AM
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: pruning "dead" licenses

Roddixon wrote:

>I think it is nearly impossible to prune licenses without risking 
>allegations that the certification trademark is being misused.  
>

I'd suggest "current" and "inactive" license sections/pages.

This solves the immediate problem, plus an archive of superseded 
licenses would be valuable for journalists and historians writing about 
the evolution of open source.

- Robin 'Roblimo' Miller