Lawrence Rosen, author of Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law, and author of the Open Software License (OSL), has announced on the OSI's license-discuss list a draft of version 3 of the OSL (pdf). Rosen explains that many of the changes are in response to the Report on Open Source Licensing of Software Developed by The European Commission. In addition to seeking comments on the proposed changes Rosen mentions the interest others have had in creating variants of the OSL, which Rosen forbids without explicit permission. He is apparently in talks regarding assigning his copyright in the license text to "a respected non-profit organization" and placing responsibility for license stewardship with the unnamed non-profit. (I don't have any inside information, but one would guess that an organization such as the OSDL would be a natural choice.)

While the OSL is used by less than 1% of the projects at SourceForge.net using an OSI-approved license, as a license written by an attorney with extensive expertise in open source licensing, it attracts the attention of corporations considering releasing code under an open source license and obviously, it attracted the attention of the European Commission. So, if you too have some expertise or interest in open source software licensing, consider taking Rosen up on his request for comments. A new and improved OSL will only continue to attract the attention of software licensors.