I will point out that the most “famous” example wasn’t CC0 but NOSA 2.0 where 
one single individual, representing the OSI in an offical capacity, withheld 
any voting on the license for three years despite it being a replacement for a 
prior version and hence no proliferation issue, addressed some long standing 
concerns about that license, was already listed as a “special purpose license” 
with limited purview, had already been discussed on this list and was 
recommended for approval by the majority of participants and the former list 
moderator.

That CC declined to go through the same experience is understandable and it 
appears that NASA has given up on the process entirely.

For anyone to argue that there wasn’t undue influence on this list in the past 
is...interesting.

Whether this has been adequately addressed with the current, mostly untested, 
guidelines is debatable but the concern with “undue influence”, “loud voices” 
and “opaque process” is not without merit or past evidence.

Speaking only for myself,

Nigel

From: Richard Fontana 
<richard.font...@opensource.org<mailto:richard.font...@opensource.org>>
Date: Friday, Mar 15, 2019, 5:27 PM
To: license-discuss@lists.opensource.org 
<license-discuss@lists.opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss@lists.opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] discussion of L-R process [was Re: 
[License-review] Approval: Server Side Public License, Version 2 (SSPL v2)]

For many submitted licenses, there is no vote because the submitter essentially 
withdraws from the process (formally or otherwise) in the face of negative 
reaction on the mailing list. One of the more famous examples of this was the 
submission of CC0, where Creative Commons withdrew the license from 
consideration after the discussion came to center on criticism of the  "No ... 
patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or 
otherwise affected by this
document." language. But in most cases the community (license-review) reaction 
clearly points in one direction. Historically there was a tendency to encourage 
the license submitter to withdraw.

...

That might suggest that if there's a loud voices problem, it is not about undue 
influence on *OSI*, but undue influence on the license submitter (i.e., the 
reaction to the license is so overwhelmingly
negative that the license submitter informally or formally withdraws from the 
process).
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