[License-review] [PROPOSAL] Invite Creative Commons to submit CC0 Dedication.

[Karl Fogel]

Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd.de> writes:
>>Does anyone here on the license review committee think that inviting
>>Creative Commons to submit the CC0 Dedication for OSI approval is a bad
>>idea, and if so, why?
>
>I think submitting the licence fallback of CC0 for review as
>an Open Source licence is a very good idea. (This is distinct.)
>OSI should probably look at the entire document but not certify
>a “this isn’t copyrighted” statement as a copyright licence.

That's a useful distinction, thank you.

But let's remember what 99.9% of people are going to understand if we
approve this license: "OSI says CC0 is an open source license".

We can talk all we want about how our position is actually more nuanced,
how we're not evaluating the dedication portion only the license
portion, etc.  But ultimately, the takeaway will be "CC0 is open
source", and to some degree "OSI is saying public domain is open
source".

Of course we will be *extremely* precise in all our public statements on
the matter.  But in the end, we're going to create a new confusion
source.  The question is whether the new confusion will be better than
the old (current) confusion around PD and OSI.  IMHO it might well be,
but we must not pretend to ourselves that confusion will go away.

-Karl