[License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Richard Fontana scripsit:

> When the MXM license was considered, some people pointed to OSD #7
> as suggesting that a sufficiently narrowly-drawn patent license grant
> in a license would not be Open Source. This was the problem I raised
> when CC0 was submitted. It was the inconsistency. It depends on your
> view of how the OSD applies to patents.

Since it nowhere mentions them, I don't see how it can apply to them.
#7 merely says that licenses of the form "You get rights a, b, and c,
whereas your transferees only get rights a and b", possibly qualified by
"unless they sign this", aren't open-source licenses.

I continue to think that our CC0 decision was wrong insofar as it can
be read as saying that the CC0 license is not an open-source (as opposed
to OSI Certified) license.  There may be reasons not to certify it,
but not to deny that it is open source.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Female celebrity stalker, on a hot morning in Cairo:
"Imagine, Colonel Lawrence, ninety-two already!"
El Auruns's reply:  "Many happy returns of the day!"