[License-discuss] License Stewards

[Lawrence Rosen]

Rick Moen wrote:
> I certainly never turn up my nose if someone offers me promissory 
> estoppel, but I'm not sure a licence steward venting an amateur
> opinion[1] about the copyrightability of his/her creation establishes
> estoppel.

Let me suggest a way around this issue. Remember that I started this thread
after someone at Apache asked for permission to modify our license. It would
help everyone if we could simply point to the OSI website and say that
"Every open source license published on the OSI website (including the
Apache License) is distributed by OSI under CC0. Help yourself! Knock
yourself out!" 

Is there any license steward who would care (or is alive to care) about OSI
simply making that declaration on its website -- and, by the way, taking
responsibility for doing so on behalf of all open source license authors who
are dead or don't care?

Then every OSI-approved license could serve as a model license. If OSI did
that, then Apache and others could simply refer anyone who feels the urge to
modify our open source license to come here for model agreements. That would
also be an opportune time to dissuade people from actually doing so by
educating them about the horrors of license proliferation.

/Larry