[License-discuss] popularity, usage, re-review of old licenses [was Re: Evolving the License Review process for OSI

[Luis Villa]

On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 3:50 PM Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
wrote:

>
> On 6/3/2019 11:31 AM, Smith, McCoy wrote:
>
> If new findings occur with currently-approved licences that are not making it completely unusable, they ought to be kept, perhaps in a “grandfathered, problematic, actively derecommended for new works” category.
>
> Per the observation above, might there also be room for a "grandfathered, non-OSD compliant, new works using this license are not Open Source" category?
>
> I'd be interested in volunteering if there ever were a committee to review the current list to identify any listed licenses that do not (or might not) conform to the OSD.
>
> Is there any way to find out if some of these licenses are even still in
> use (or ever were)?
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org


One could probably do a pretty decent survey with some combination of
libraries.io, clearlydefined.io, and Debian/Fedora (for C/C++, which aren't
covered well by libraries.io or AFAIK clearlydefined.io). Daniel German or
Philippe Ombredanne would probably be able to suggest appropriate
queries/databases.

There's a bunch of problems with using this data for relative popularity
(some discussion of this waaaayyyy back in the archives, between Daniel and
I) but for basic "is it used by any modern-ish software at all" those could
give you a pretty good start.

Luis
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