[License-discuss] Views on React licensing?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Henrik Ingo (henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi):

> I would have to disagree on the part that there was any consensus,
> wide or otherwise, but you're correct, and thanks for reminding me,
> that technically the issue was unresolved as the submitting party
> withdrew the submission.

You're welcome.  My perception at the time was that everyone on
license-review agreed that CC0 was OSD-compliant, because even if the
public domain dedication doesn't achieve the desired effect in
particular jurisdictions, the fallback permissive terms (clause 3)
clearly was in itself OSD-compliant.

But, now that I think about it, we never fully discussed whether the
lack of either implied or explicit patent licences was a problem,
because of CC0's submission being suddenly withdrawn -- whether because
the submitter didn't want to further burden CC's full plate of work,
whether it was because OSI certifying a non-software licence was a bit
silly, or for some other reason, we may never know.

> That discussion actually referenced another prior submission, the MXM
> License related to the MPEG standard reference implementation
> (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/should-open-source-licence-ever-be-patent-agnostic)
> where the main reason for submitting the license was to carve out the
> patent license from MPL. This submission was also not approved and was
> cited as precedent when discussing the CC0 license.

I suppose we can speak in loosely metaphorical terms of 'precedents'
on license-review, though licences are considered on their individual
merits, and we're not bound to repeat prior mistakes.

My recollection was that license-review participants were suggesting CC
drop that exclusion to make it, in our collective opinion (to the extent
there is such a thing) a better licence.  We never reached the question
of whether it would be approved without such an improvement.

My understanding of the larger patent problem is that any software 
with a severe enough patent-encumbrance problem that recipients cannot 
exercise the full set of open source rights is _not open source_ even if
the licence would otherwise so suggest.  But yes, if we'd proceeded, I'd
probably have concurred with adverse views such as the one Tom Calloway
expressed about MXM Public License in 2009:
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2009-April/000720.html
The point was made particularly obvious by the submission coming from
MPEG-LA, which is, after all, pretty much entirely about patents.