Towards an OSI-approved "waive all rights" software license

[Lawrence Rosen]

Richard Fontana wrote:
> I am not too troubled by that to the extent CC0 continues to be
> applied to rather trivial pieces of code, but use of CC0 on a
> substantial body of code might be another matter.

I'm not convinced you actually need a license for "rather trivial pieces of
code" that may be in the *real* public domain and not eligible for copyright
protection at all. See, e.g., 17 USC 102(b). This is another example of how,
in the context of open source software, we ask for licenses for things we
can just take, and ignore the important stuff (e.g., patents) we really need
licenses for. 

Maybe it depends on your definition of "trivial".

/Larry




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana at redhat.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 11:20 AM
> To: Lawrence Rosen
> Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: Towards an OSI-approved "waive all rights" software
> license
> 
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:00:21AM -0700, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> > 2. The CC0 license says nothing about patents. I find this
> particularly
> > troubling when a CC0 license (or the BSD license, for that matter!)
> is used
> > for software or specifications by companies that have large patent
> > portfolios.
> 
> In fact CC0 explicitly excludes any licensing of patents.
> 
>   No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived,
>   abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
>   document.
> 
> I am not too troubled by that to the extent CC0 continues to be
> applied to rather trivial pieces of code, but use of CC0 on a
> substantial body of code might be another matter.
> 
> I have recently suggested to Creative Commons that the issue should
> perhaps be revisited in future versions of CC0, now that its
> suitability for software has been acknowledged.
> 
> - RF
>