[License-discuss] Possible alternative was: Re: U.S. Army Research Laboratory Open Source License (ARL OSL) Version 0.4.1

[Christopher Sean Morrison]

> On Mar 1, 2017, at 4:17 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> 
> Quoting Lawrence Rosen (lrosen at rosenlaw.com):
> 
>> The question remains from many years of discussion here: What is wrong
>> with CC0 being approved by OSI as a license for components in other
>> open source software? Including for U.S. government works that may (or
>> may not) be public domain?
> 
> For whatever it's worth, I said at the time it was under review that CC0
> was very clearly open source, and thus approving it makes sense despite
> its unfortunate explicit waiver of patent rights.
> 
>> The absence of an explicit patent provision applies equally to the BSD
>> and MIT licenses. 
> 
> I will quibble that these are not the as an explicit denial of even an
> _implicit_ patent license, which is the situation that applies with CC0.
> I continue to say, CC0 would be made a better permissive licence were
> that clause removed.  But I would not wish the ideal to become the enemy
> of the good.

Ditto, I think CC0 would be a far better license if it included an explicit patent grant or at least had an author option to include one.  I can raise that point with them to see if their perspective is any different now X years later or if any development is in the works.

From what Richard said, it sounds like a CC0 submission “should” be the steward so I’ll contact them to see if they’re willing to submit it again given recent developments.  However, if they decline, I’ll write up and submit the request myself as a Gov’t proponent.  If anything, it will let the patent right denial discussion be hashed out and a decision can be made here or by the OSI board.

Cheers!
Sean