[License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly reorganize the OSI licensing pages

[Chris Travers]

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> And why in particular might litigation be dumb?  Consider permissive
> licences, for example.  A licensee suing to invalidate such a licence's
> grant of rights would achieve... having fewer rights.  I.e., licensee
> would have some implied rights from lawful receipt of the covered work,
> but practically all substantive rights would remain reserved by default
> to the copyright holder by default operation of copyright law.  Well
> done, Mr. Litigator!  You've just scored an own goal.
>
That assumes the goal is to invalidate a license's grant of rights.
Far more likely, I would think, would be arguments over the scope of
the requirements of the license.   For permissive licenses though, it
would still be dumb.  The cost of compliance is so much less than the
cost of a lawsuit even if one wins that I would have trouble seeing a
case where there was a colorable argument that would get to court
unless one or both parties were idiots.

Anyway this is to say I agree with the overall point.  I don't know
what counts as successful enforcement.  Moreover if you define it as
requiring court action, then you are selecting for licenses that are
likely to be litigated.

My vote:  Get these changes up.  Let's start another thread for
talking about license recommendation practices.

Best Wishes,.
Chris Travers