[License-review] Submitting CC0 for OSI approval

[Richard Fontana]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 10:09:34PM -0600, Karl Fogel wrote:
> "Clark C. Evans" <cce at clarkevans.com> writes:
> >I'm in the camp that assumes a MIT/BSD license would also grant any
> >patent license to use the work that the author may control.  This is 
> >my assumption because those licenses don't specifically reference 
> >copyright in the language.  Although, perhaps the MIT/BSD licenses, 
> >popular as they may be, should be deprecated by the OSI if they are 
> >seen as a substantial risk.
> 
> In general, the OSI should not deprecate widely-used licenses with long
> pedigrees... But especially not for these reasons.
> 
> The law around software patents would be complex even if it were stable;
> its increasing instability makes the whole field even more complex.  so
> unless we're pretty sure that a license actually weakens a recipient's
> patent position, we shouldn't deprecate or reject on the grounds that
> the license merely makes explicit that it does not apply to patents.

Just to be clear, the widely-used versions of the MIT and BSD families
of licenses don't say anything about patents.

- Richard