[joshberkus]

Josh Berkus, member of the OSI license review committee here.

License Zero was rejected because it's not open source. It is, in fact, a business model for a specific startup (and, I'd argue, not for the writers of the code either).

Kyle had some other interesting ideas for licensing that could have been approved as open source, but was uninterested in pursuing them if they didn't support License Zero the business.

[kemitchell]

Howdy, Josh.

The last draft of License Zero Reciprocal posted to license-review works perfectly well on its own, without any dual licensing, and without any relationship to the business I formed. Its language wasn't any more coupled to a particular business model, or any business model at all, than AGPL's. If someone told you otherwise, they told you wrong.

I released the source code for licensezero.com itself under a successor to L0-R, without offering to sell any private licenses whatsoever. Anyone could use the terms similarly.

"License Zero was rejected because it's not open source" is tautological. And, alas, that's mostly in line with my experience of the license-review process. Some great folks offered back-and-forth, and were willing to explore. But that was largely drowned out by bare conclusions, and the drama that flared up whenever I tried to probe them.