Full Article: http://socializedsoftware.com/2008/05/08/the-curse-of-open-source-license-proliferation/
Posted on May 8, 2008 by Mark
I remember when the big open source debate was whether a
piece of software was really open source, meaning it was released under an Open
Source License ProliferationOSI-approved license. The tides are shifting,
debates now center around which open source license to use. Adding to the
complexity of the debate is proliferation of OSI-approved licenses. Now
discussions are rising over the open source licenses that are in the best
interest of all stakeholders of an open source project. In the case of
collective software works there is also the added intricacies of license compatibility.
Part of the problem is that companies are trying to drive
their own vanity licenses that reinforce their branding and leverage the
goodwill associated with the open source seal of approval. SugarCRM once
mounted an offensive asking for acceptance of their Sugar Public License (a
derivative of the OSI-Approved Mozilla Public License) that for a brief time
was gaining popularity among commercial open source developers. The license was
rejected and Sugar has since moved to the GPLv3. Ironically the Common Public
Attribution License (CPAL) submitted by Social Text, which bears many
similarities to the Sugar Public License, was accepted by the OSI. Even
Microsoft has successfully lobbied the OSI-board for approval of two licenses.
The Microsoft Public License (M-PL) and the Microsoft Reciprocal License
(Ms-RL) which are very similar to the BSD and GPL licenses.
The number of open source projects has grown considerably
over the last ten years, actually exponentially according to a paper delivered
by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle in
March of this year. According to Black Duck Software knowledgebase the most
common open source license used by open source projects is the GPL version 2.0.
According to that same source 94% of open ….
1 comment:
Great post much appreciate the time you took to write this.
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