[License-review] Outstanding license submissions

[Richard Fontana]

Hi license-review,

There are a number of licenses that have been submitted for approval
that have fallen through the cracks. What that number is is
debatable.

1. It is agreed by everyone, I think, that the NASA Open Source
Agreement 2.0 was properly formally submitted (more than once, in
fact). 

I intend to post something separately about this one.


2. I went back and looked at the archives of license-review (from the
point of this list's hosting on opensource.org, i.e. late 2011). I
believe that each of the following was arguably a formal request for
OSI approval, with no indication that there was anything formally
lacking in the submission, yet I don't think any of these was
acknowledged by the OSI as having been formally submitted and I
believe no decision was ever made on any of them. Some of these,
particularly the earlier ones, were seen at the time as part of a
troubling wave of "crayon licenses". For at least one or two, it is
likely that the license submitter gave up, not having the tenacity of,
say, Messrs. Geurts or Wright.

Forget Me Not License
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/000072.html

Svoboda
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-May/000416.html

No Nonsense Open Source License
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-June/000441.html

APL AROS Public License
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-July/000451.html

Symisc Public License
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-September/000484.html

"BSD-based anti-patent license"
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2013-February/000522.html

Modular Open Software License 'working draft 5'
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2013-March/000547.html

Public Software License
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-March/000750.html

Russian Permissive Free Software License
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-March/000758.html

eCos License version 2.0
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-August/000853.html

GG License 1.0
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-January/000968.html

I am not including here license submissions that I believe it is
fairly clear were withdrawn from consideration by the submitter.

You might argue that several of these were not really worth extensive
review, but a clear decision ought to have been made nonetheless, and
in any case that view can't apply to *all* of the license submissions
in this set.


3. Really Old license submissions found by Engel Nyst:
(see http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2013-November/000733.html )

Zope Public License 2.1
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg07517.html

wxWidgets (name change of wxWindows)
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg07542.html

W3C Software License and Notice (2002 version)
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.licenses.open-source.general/834


I am not sure how exhaustive Engel Nyst's research was but I have to
wonder whether there were other lost license approval requests from
the 2005-2011 period.

I am not sure what if anything we should do about all of these, other
than NOSA 2.0 which clearly requires a decision by the board for the
very patient Mr. Geurts. If perchance anyone reading this was
associated with one of the listed license submissions, by all means
please indicate whether you wish to revive review of the license in
question.

Is there anything we should do to take better care of license approval
submissions? It was suggested a while back that we consider using an
issue tracker for all license approval requests.

Richard