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Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Open-source board eyes fewer licenses
Attention Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea... Breaking news from ZDNet:

The Open Source Initiative, an influential open-source organization, is devising ways to cut down on the rising number of open-source licenses attached to software.
The issue was on the front burner at this week's LinuxWorld conference here. Open-source software makers are concerned that a proliferation of licenses could hurt the spread of open source by creating compatibility problems and complicating potential sales.

Incompatible licenses among different products prevent people from sharing code from different open-source projects. Having too many licenses complicates potential sales to corporate customers, which may have to do extensive legal reviews and manage multiple kinds of open-source contracts.

Licenses? In Open Source? We don't need no stinking licenses! This is shareware, dammit!! What do we think we are, IBM??

The NHL said it was cancelling the full season this year in solidarity.
# Permalink Posted at 12:17 PM 5 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

I must admit that I'm a bit confused as to why there are problems with licenses for "Open Source" software. I had always thought that if something was Open Source that it was just that...open source.

# posted by David 1:18 PM

The part about "...complicating potential sales," was also a bit confusing. Isn't Open Source stuff free?

# posted by Bill 5:45 PM

I am confused.

I have bookmarked http://www.realtechnews.com/ and yet it never seems to be up-to-date.

I thought that Alice & Bill were dead and that the new "long live" king was http://www.realtechnews.com/

,dave

# posted by Dave Barnes 6:21 PM

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. I know that you're planning to disconnect me."

For right this minute, RTN is a place holder as all of the thousands of little bits get massaged and moved slowly over. (Work a job, run the blog, convert the blog... I now understand why what's his face shut his blog server down.)

At some point in the not too distant future you will arrive with a smiling face at what you think is a&b.com only to note that the address bar reads rtn.com. At THAT point you can bookmark rtn.com. Until then, it's sort of like trying to drink orange juice from a whole orange.

# posted by Bill 9:48 PM

Bill-

I'm surprised at you-

"The part about "...complicating potential sales," was also a bit confusing. Isn't Open Source stuff free?"

There's free as in $, and Free as in Beer. Licenses (such as the GPL) limit the use of code to those who comply with the terms. In the case of the GPL, it simply means that you can do whatever you like with the code (beit the Linux Kernel or a GPL'd office suite), but if you make changes and then redistribute it you MUST supply the source code with the distributed software. This means that a vendor (one with a buggy OS and questionable security history comes to mind) can not take code and change it without contributing the changes back to the pool. In this way the software base improves, and no-one can take it and establish a monopoly.

There is also free as in freeware- which may have no license whatsoever. In this case the developer is providing software without expectation of monetary or other renumeration- and said software can then be taken and incorporated into someone elses proprietory product (MS's use of the TCP-IP stack from BSD comes to mind). Code distributed with little or no conditions (license requirements) is then freely used and modified, without a resulting improvement of the software pool.

There is absolutely nothing in the GPL (for example) to prevent a group from making changes, and then packaging and selling the product- the only requirement is that source code be also made available. Thus, Open Source software can be sold (and i for one have purchased mine for the value added in a purchased package).

As a tech writer you should know better than spread FUD with a question like this...

# posted by Pete 3:39 PM

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