pruning "dead" licenses

[Steve Mallett]

Russell Nelson wrote:
> I got to thinking the other day that we really ought to be pruning
> "dead" licenses from the list.  The principle seems correct, since the
> underlying intellectual property right expires as well: copyright
> after a gazillion years[1], patents after twenty years, and trademarks
> after you stop defending them.
> 
> A "dead" license is one which is no longer used for any projects.
> 
> That's obviously a tough criterion to meet, since we would have to
> prove a negative.  A related positive criteria is to ask the person
> who (or entity which) submitted the license if they are still using
> it, and if they know of anyone else using it.
> 
> Another definition of a "dead" license is one which is not being used
> by any projects which advertise OSI Certification.  If none of the
> licensed projects need OSI Certification, (and we can infer this by
> their failure to advertise OSI Certification), then why should we keep
> the license's approval?
> 
> Comments?

Hello again list.

Perhaps a popular and a "yeah it's open source" list would be best.

This way we have the common everyday licenses to suggest, and one could 
still verify that some offbeat project's license is indeed 'open source'.

-- 
Steve Mallett
http://steve.osdir.com

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
				-- Dr. Seuss