[License-discuss] [Osi] [General enquiries] Dual License for CC0

[John Cowan]

odie5533 at gmail.com writes:

> Hi. I see questions about CC0 and public domain dedication pop up
> all the time on message boards. In the FAQ, it goes through why these
> licenses are not currently OSI approved. I was wondering if you could
> amend the FAQ to put forth the option that developers can dual license
> their work as e.g. both CC0 and MIT. It seems a lot of people don't know
> about this option, and it makes for a good middle ground for those that
> want public domain, but also want to be sure they're covered by OSI's
> approval system.

It's not clear what the advantages would be.  CC0 is structured as a
public-domain dedication of the copyright rights, or failing that a
simple permissive license that does not grant patent rights.  But it is
not clear that MIT grants patent rights either.  Some people, including
me, claim that it does because it contains the Yang Worship Word "use",
which is part of patent rather than copyright ontology, but MIT itself has
explicitly denied this.  The BSD licenses have a similar problem.  So you
would want a license with an explicit patent grant, and such licenses
are pretty comprehensive already, remote from the intention of CC0.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
If you understand, things are just as they are.
if you do not understand, things are just as they are.