[License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

Christopher,

There's no need in my mind to change the license.  Being able to release
CC0 code alongside CC0 data is a useful thing for the science community
and open source.  I hope that you do not change the FAQ nor deprecate the
use of CC0 for software.

I know you're in the absurd position of being courted to submit CC0 to the
OSI and then being told, well, gee we don't know if this is such a good
idea maybe you should change it even though the FSF has already approved
it so most folks would think this is a no brainer.

This experience certainly has been informative.

Can you guys make CC 4.0 software friendly please?  Pretty please?

Thanks,

Nigel

On 2/24/12 5:20 PM, "Christopher Allan Webber"
<cwebber at creativecommons.org> wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>We've discussed this internally, and unfortunately we agree that it's
>best to withdraw CC0 from the OSI review process at this time.  There
>have been several issues raised around the language declaring patents
>out of scope in the tool (that they weaken equitable estoppel defenses
>against patents or that they heighten risk by putting someone "on
>notice" about patent risks in the associated code).
>
>There have been questions about why that lanugage is there.  First of
>all, speculation that we did not anticipate CC0 usage for software at
>the time is true.  The patent language that exists comes out of
>conversations with the scientific data community, whom were a large
>target of adoption for the tool.  This community felt strongly that
>there was a need to clearly waive something into the public domain
>without also waiving patents in the process.  Hence the language.
>
>It has been suggested that CC simply remove this text from the CC0
>legalcode.  This would of course require releasing a new version, as
>we can't change the 1.0 legalcode once it has been released.
>Unfortunately, even doing a small versioning of something with as
>straightforward of an action as this is not as simple as it might
>sound.  First of all, releasing a new version of a legal tool,
>including CC0, requires a large conversation between many parties and
>experts, and thus inevitably is not a quick task.  On top of this, the
>CC 4.0 process is in full swing, and there is not enough bandwidth
>within the organization to do a CC0 revisioning at the same time.
>Thus, beginning the process for a new version of CC0 would have to
>wait until CC 4.0 is out, which means that won't start until at
>least 2013.
>
>That said, this experience has certainly been informative, and will be
>taken into consideration in possible future CC0 versioning, should
>that happen.
>
> - Christopher Allan Webber and Creative Commons
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