Unlicense not to be reviewed by the OSI

[Gioele Barabucci]

It looks like the thread from the license...@opensource.org ml
somehow did not get to this mailing list.

Unlicense will not be reviewed by the OSI because it is a "crayon"
licence (i.e. drafted by non legal professionals). Such licences have
been problematic in the past.
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/000047.html

Although Unlicense will not be reviewed, some (supposed) flaws have been
highlighted.
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/000052.html

To summarise: Unlicense has little chance of being reviewed by the OSI,
let alone approved.

In the same news, CC0 has been withdrawn from the OSI process.
http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-February/000233.html

All this is sad, it is 2012 and yet there are no easy ways (backed by
major organisations) to dedicate software to the public domain .

--
Gioele Barabucci <gio...@svario.it>

[Mike Linksvayer]

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 12:53, Gioele Barabucci <gio...@svario.it> wrote:
> It looks like the thread from the license...@opensource.org ml somehow
> did not get to this mailing list.

I mentioned it, but following up to a very old thread
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/unlicense/an9PHJ0NGxA/5xNx1k09_WUJ

> Unlicense will not be reviewed by the OSI because it is a "crayon" licence
> (i.e. drafted by non legal professionals). Such licences have been
> problematic in the past.
> http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/000047.html
>
> Although Unlicense will not be reviewed, some (supposed) flaws have been
> highlighted.
> http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/000052.html
>
> To summarise: Unlicense has little chance of being reviewed by the OSI, let
> alone approved.

It can be reviewed if someone submits it. If someone does, I'd expect
criticism of it to be harsh.

> In the same news, CC0 has been withdrawn from the OSI process.
> http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-February/000233.html
>
> All this is sad, it is 2012 and yet there are no easy ways (backed by major
> organisations) to dedicate software to the public domain .

A bit sad, but having the backing of a large organization is not
strictly necessary; obviously a number of projects are using
Unlicense, Ampify Unlicense, CC0, various ad hoc public domain
dedications, without OSI approval. I think it is a good thing in the
longer term, if it spurs development of more aggressive public domain
dedications ... I'lll mention again the blog post where I expanded on
this http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2012/02/25/permissions/

Mike