For approval: MXM Public license

[Matthew Flaschen]

OSI review wrote:

>My final conclusion is that if the BSD family is considered compliant,
so shall
> be the MXM, as it does not condition the copyright grant to the
> obtaining of the patents, just as the BSD licenses don't deal with them.

I don't accept this analogy.  Your license has kept MPL's "under
intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark)"
disclaimer but then removed "under Patents Claims infringed by the
making, using or selling of Original Code".  So basically, you're
denying an implicit license like MPL, but then refusing to grant even
the minimally required explicit license.

On the other hand, BSD has "Redistribution and use in source and binary
forms, with or without modification, are permitted".  This is a solid
implicit patent license, and there is no attempt to disclaim it.

Thus, I think this license is non-approvable in its own right, and very
similar to unsuccessful past licenses such as Broad Institute Public License

> And insofar an implementer is confident that the part of the code it
> uses if free from the patented area, or it decided to later challenge
> the patent in case an infringement litigation is threatened, the license
> works just fine.

Open Source licensees should not fear being sued for simply exercising
the rights laid out in the OSD.  The OSD says nothing about being
limited to copyright.  "You can challenge the patent in court" is
obvious and not a consolation.  You know full well that route is
completely infeasible for most licensees.

Matt Flaschen