The speaker, Nate Willis, discusses the challenges of choosing a license for a specification he worked on called Text Shaping. He explains that while there are standard licenses available, such as the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons licenses, they may not be suitable for his specific case. He examines the licenses used by organizations like the W3C and the IETF, but ultimately finds that there isn't a readily available license that meets his needs. He concludes that they will need to create their own license for the specification and encourages others to share any insights or solutions they may have.