For approval: MXM Public license

[Matthew Flaschen]

Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
>> There is no way to produce a FOSS license that explicitly denies patent
>> rights.
> 
> Mmmm...not providing patent rights is the same thing in as much as the
> result is the same.

Right, and every OSI-approved license provides patent rights, not
withstanding the efforts by some to muddy the waters.

> The question is whether OSD #1 requires patent grants

No provision of the OSD /explicitly/ requires any specific grant of
intellectual property.  There is no mention of copyright, patent, or
trademark in the OSD.  So saying, the OSD doesn't require patent grants
makes no sense. It doesn't require copyright license grants explicitly
either.  In practice, /both/ copyright and patent rights must be granted
in order to ensure the actions listed in the OSD are possible.

> Eh...ultimately an ISO reference implementation will get used with or
> without OSI approval as "open source".

If the submitter doesn't care about OSI approval they're free to leave.
   But OSI shouldn't weaken its standards on the grounds of
"inevitability" (though it's far from inevitable that a given ISO
standard becomes popular).

>> If it were true that "it is widely understood that the BSD probably does
>> not grant patent rights anyway", there would be no point to Clear BSD!
>> Their argument is self-defeating.
> 
> I don't know that any aspect of implicit vs. explicit patent rights is 
> widely understood by FOSS developers, period.

Did I say anything about FOSS developers?  Letting developers come up
with licenses without asking legal advice gives us things like the
Artistic License.

Matt Flaschen