[License-review] Submitting CC0 for OSI approval

[John Cowan]

Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> writes:

> I am not sure whether there is precedent for an OSI-approved license
> (at least, one that is, today, widely used) that explicitly reserves
> all patent rights. Many licenses are silent on the issue, while
> several relatively modern licenses include patent license grants of
> certain sorts.

I went through all the OSI-approved licenses, and all but one either
require contributors to license their patents (typically only as essential
to the implementation) or make no mention of patents.  However, Clause
5 of the Frameworx license says:

        Except as expressly provided herein, this License Agreement
        preserves and respects Your and The Frameworx Companys respective
        intellectual property rights, including, in the case of The
        Frameworx Company, its copyrights and patent rights relating to
        the Frameworx Code Base.

Since this is the only mention of patents, this is in effect an express
reservation of patent rights.  Obviously this is not a heavily used
license, being in fact specific to one product of one licensor.  But it
is OSI-approved.

-- 
John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org
    "Mr. Lane, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have
        to do will be to send me a telegram asking and it will be done."
    "Mr. Hearst, if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do
        anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery."