Public domain software is not open-source?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Matthew Flaschen (matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu):

> Again, it's a question for someone considering reuse.  OSI has never 
> been in the business of officially validating license statuses.  They 
> won't tell you (officially) that program Foo is under license Bar.  Of 
> course, I agree that verifying this information is critical for reusers.

Given doubt over whether purporting to abolish by fiat the unexpired
copyright title of a creative work _even_ has a reliable and consistent
result across legal jurisdictions -- let alone having the result
intended -- I'd personally rather OSI not even go there, and instead
await the outcome of test cases (if any) initiated by the foolhardy.