[License-discuss] Reply to various recent postings on the crayon license issue

[Richard Fontana]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 12:45:34AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> On 12/19/2011 09:54 AM, Tom Callaway wrote:
> >nor are we the author of any of the licenses we track(1)), so
> >we're not the appropriate entity to submit what we find to the OSI
> >for approval.
> Can you tell me how many licenses are in Fedora? If it's 300, it's
> something of a self-created problem, but then you'd be in lots of
> company.

The numerosity itself is not a problem, in my opinion, since most of
the previously-unfamiliar licenses one encounters are benign variants
on well-known types. The challenge is in dealing with the cases that
are, in some explicit sense, right on the FOSS/non-FOSS edge
(generally by the license drafter's design), or else with poorly
drafted (though probably well-intended) legacy licenses (hello
TeXLive!).

- RF