[License-review] Submitting CC0 for OSI approval

[Russ Nelson]

John Cowan writes:
 > Karl Fogel scripsit:
 > 
 > > By the awy, both MIT and BSD contain language strongly implying that
 > > they are copyright notices and apply only to rights within that domain.
 > 
 > What I said was that these two licenses contain the word "use", which is
 > a patent rather than a copyright term of art.  So either "use" conveys no
 > rights, or it conveys a patent license.

OR they are belt-and-suspendering. US copyright law doesn't allow the
holder of a legally-obtained copy of a work from using or destroying
it in any way desired. But that could change, or a court could
interpret it differently, or laws outside the US may give copyright
the ability to control use.

Absent the word "patent", it's hard to claim that a copyright license
is a patent license. Our community *does* make that claim, but who
knows what a court would say?

Patent licensing is a mess. It would be better to establish one policy
for all OSI-approved licenses, possibly modifying the OSD, than to try
to piecemeal it one license at a time.

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