[License-review] OSI, legal conditions outside the "four corners" of the license, and PD/CC 0 [was Re: Can OSI specify that public domain is open source?]

[Karl Fogel]

Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd.de> writes:
>As PD dedications are (independent on whether they are problematic)
>no licences, OSI has absolutely no business related to them.

Well, this seems like not the basis on which we should make this
decision.

The fact that one is called a "license" and the other is called a
"dedication" does not lessen their essential similarity: they are
promises that certain monopoly powers will not be enforced.  Those sorts
of promises are what the OSI evaluates and sometimes approves.

We could decide, for other reasons, not to evaluate any PD dedications.
I just don't think we should decide that on the basis of nominalism.

-Karl