[License-review] avoid gray areas?

Russ Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Sat Mar 3 04:47:22 UTC 2012


Josh Berkus writes:
 > 
 > > I don't think these two statements are really very closely linked.
 > > 
 > > 1. "Bruce [is] telling people to avoid gray areas."
 > > 
 > > 2. "[A very black-and-white issue applies to CC0.]"
 > > 
 > > (I obviously just paraphrased the second case.)
 > > 
 > > You're talking about different things.
 > 
 > Russ was arguing for acceptance of CC0 based on the "grey area" argument
 > above.  So at least in his mind it's equivalent.

No, I'm arguing that if we should decline the CC0 because code
licensed under it doesn't come with a patent license, then we should
deprecate the BSD (&etc) because it doesn't come with a patent
license. DiBona agreed with this statement.

Or, if they do come with an implicit patent license, it's too much of
a grey area for us to be making guarantees to people.

I'm not sure that "our public" is ready to have the BSD license be
deprecated. I could be wrong, of course.

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