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

[Bruce Perens]

On 02/25/2012 05:45 AM, Clark C. Evans wrote:
>
> In this case, the OSI should also approve a MIT derivative with an additional term that says that patents are explicitly *excluded* from the grant.
This isn't a good idea for software.
> Christopher said the patent exclusion in the CC0 was deliberate because those who would use the CC0 *have* patents relevant to the material being  released under the CC0 and do not wish to also grant them.
The organizations in question are in general performing publicly-funded 
research. It's unfortunate that the Bayh-Dole act in the U.S. (and 
similar policy elsewhere) encourages them not to return the benefit of 
that research to the public that funded it, and instead to patent it and 
selling that to a monopoly holder. And thus we often find a business 
being sued for infringement of a patent, after paying taxes that funded 
the development of the patent.

CC0 is a way for the scientists to sneak the data past this system while 
leaving the piece the universities want to sell. But we need to 
recognize that the piece that's being held back is not in the interest 
of software developers and users, and ultimately is used to extort them. 
We shouldn't further encourage it.

     Thanks

     Bruce
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