[License-review] CC0 incompliant with OSD on patents, [was: MXM compared to CC0 ]

[Bruce Perens]

Larry,

I don't really see that you are stating anything new. We know full well 
that the grantors only hold a few patents in the torrent. In the recent 
vote, it looked like about 50% still felt it was worthwhile to make sure 
that the grantors are not themselves taking bad action.

It's nice that some business gets indemnities from big companies. My own 
experience, however, is that projects like JMRI only receive attention 
from those companies once there is already a lower court ruling that 
would severely inconvenience the large companies.

Ultimately, this comes down to who you're working for. If your customer 
is Red Hat and its users, this issue doesn't matter much to you. For OSI 
to be a rubber-stamp of licenses without considering policy might well 
be a good decision for those parties. If you're trying to look out for 
the volunteer developers and their projects, you get a different answer.

But it might also be that you are attempting to address with light a 
portion of the argument that is only heat. I don't think that will work.

     Thanks

     Bruce