[License-discuss] comprehensiveness (or not) of the OSI-approved list

[Nicholas Matthew Neft Weinstock]

I'm not sure what you meant about intentionally.  I was specifically avoiding reference of patents to avoid any appearance that my interest is tied to the subject.  My interest is in consistency and clarity, regardless of my employer at any given point in time.

I regret referencing the CC0 matter to the extent that it might distract from the point I'm trying to make.

Thanks,
Nick

> -----Original Message-----
> From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On
> Behalf Of Richard Fontana
> Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2019 9:56 AM
> To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
> Subject: [EXT] Re: [License-discuss] comprehensiveness (or not) of the OSI-
> approved list
> 
> On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 12:30 PM Nicholas Matthew Neft Weinstock
> <nweinsto at qti.qualcomm.com> wrote:
> [...]
> 
> > OSI does not do so with regards to prospective licenses.  It considers other
> factors besides the published definition.
> >
> [...]
> > OSI’s License Review committee was unable to reach consensus on
> > approving CC0,
> 
> The wording in the FAQ you referenced
> (https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero) is slightly but meaningfully
> different: "the License Review Committee was unable to reach consensus
> that it should be approved". Based on what I recall of the discussion, that
> seems to be a polite way of saying that there was a quickly growing
> consensus that it should be rejected.
> 
> > but not because it failed any element of the OSD
> (https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero).
> 
> The sentence "While many open source licenses simply do not mention
> patents, it is exceedingly rare for open source licenses to explicitly disclaim
> any conveyance of patent rights, and the Committee felt that approving such
> a license would set a dangerous precedent, and possibly even weaken
> patent infringement defenses available to users of software released under
> CC0." was written by an OSI board member several years ago and may not
> fully reflect the current view of the OSI board; I recommend that they review
> this FAQ.
> 
> I am not sure if you are doing this intentionally (I notice you are writing from
> a Qualcomm address) but there's nothing in that FAQ that suggests that CC0,
> in the views of the participants in that l-r discussion, did *not* think it failed
> elements of the OSD. Indeed my recollection is that some participants in that
> discussion specifically pointed to OSD 7 as a basis for nonconformance of CC0
> with the OSD.
> 
> (I don't necessarily disagree with the main point you were making.)
> 
>  Richard
> 
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