Four New Open Source Licenses

Russ Nelson writes "OSI has approved four new Open Source licenses. The X.Net is BSD with jurisdiction specified (note that RMS says that the GPL is not compatible with such licenses,) the New Artistic, currently that used by Perl (one paragraph added), the Sun Public License is Mozilla 1.1 with minor differences, and the Eiffel Forum License. We also modified the rationale for Open Source Definition clause 9 to remove the word "contaminate" referring to the action of the GPL."

Comments

Who Cares?

[wfrp01]

Who cares if the OSI deigns to bless this or that license? Each license stands on its merits, regardless. As either a developer, or a user, it's the license itself you should be concerned about. This is just the pompous posturing of a self-proclaimed wanna-be authority: "I DEFINE blah blah blah, and so it is done". Phgfftht.

Re:Who Cares?

[p3d0]

It just means that people more knowledgable than I am have scrutinized the license, and decided it has certain properties.

Re:Who Cares?

[Jerf]

Who cares that you don't care? Each person's opinions stand on their own merits, regardless. As either a developer, or a user, we can listen to anybody's opinions we want, and factor then in as we see fit. This is just the pompous posturing of a self-proclaimed wanna-be authority: "I SAY blah blah blah, and so it is true". Phgfftht.

Lord of the Open Source....

[MosesJones]

With this many licenses around its getting a bit silly. A friend of mine runs the Scope HMVC project Scope over at Sourceforge and had to change the license slightly so as to enable work to pay him to do it. As more and more licenses come on board it just means more work for the lawyers. Isn't it time that there was a dynamic Open Source license which had a series of checkboxes that dumped out the license appropriate to your project at the end of it.

This is meant to be high tech, but our foundations are still paper.

Re:Lord of the Open Source....

[iomud]

I agree, it's getting out of hand umpteen hundred licenses all with similar intent but different semantics. The day when it takes longer to decide which license to choose instead of which project to work on is the day when people stop having fun and stop scratching itches.

Re:Lord of the Open Source....

[Russ Nelson]

I think that, if you listen carefully, we discourage unnecessary license proliferation. On the other hand, we can't NOT approve a license if it meets our requirements.

Is the picture referenced in your signature for real or is it edited??? Hard to believe that people could be that unconscious.
-russ

Re:Lord of the Open Source....

[AntiFreeze]

At first glance, I certainly agree with you.

But there are three problems with your agrument:

• The licenses have yet to stand the test of time
• Competition is good
• A license designed by checkboxes is still standard

Let me elaborate. Over time, the poorer licenses will stop being used, therefore lowering the number of licenses in your pool of "too many", making less work for lawyers, and a higher quality of acceptable licenses for the public to use.

Simple free market -- and evolutionary -- thinking: advances do not come to fruition in a timely manner when there are only one or two main competitors. If someone wants a different license, they have the right to use it, or make up one suited for their particular project from scratch. Conclusion: multiple, conflicting licenses are healthy.

Lastly, your idea of a "dynamic" open source license has a few major flaws (which, if they could be worked out, would make your idea incredibly feasible). Most contracts, and licenses, only work to protect the parties involved when the document is taken as a whole, and one clause from one section reinforces another clause from another section. By mixing and matching sections, you could easily lose this reinforcement, making your license full of loopholes or "ambiguous" terms. You would not believe how many cases are in arbitration over "ambiguous" clauses in contracts. You must avoid this problem at all costs, but I cannot see a way around this problem, without having to pay a lawyer to sit there, go over your custom contract by hand, and fine-tune it for your project. Your idea provides a baseline contract to work with, and could save people large ammounts of money in legal fees if they needed a custom contract, but would not work well for the individual developer.

Re:Lord of the Open Source....

[ansible]

This is indeed worrisome, but some proliferation of licenses is necessary.

For example:

I was "around" (reading the mailing lists) when the Eiffel Forum License was created. Because of the nature of OO software development, it was felt that existing licenses (such as the LGPL) would not be appropriate. I don't recall all the discussions, but there were some good reasons why people didn't want to use the existing ones.

This is the "downside" to freedom; everyone tends to go off in their own direction. Of course M$ and the other industry players would be glad to consolidate end-user licenses down to just one. That would make things very simple... but not desirable or pleasant.

Re:Lord of the Open Source....

[Arandir]

It does seem to be a bit much. OSI's list of approved licences [opensource.org] is now at 26. In a few years, it may take longer to figure out which licence to use than to actually write the code itself!

OSI has recently instituted new rules for submitting new licenses. One new rule is that the submitter must state what existing license it is closest to, and why the license is inappropriate.

Hang out at license-discuss at opensource.org for a while. You'll find that the community does a very good job of weeding out the cruft, and that quite a few new license submitters have been persuaded to use and existing license instead.

But there is one big problem looming, which the OSI is working on right now. And that is someone wanting to use an existing license, but with the trivial change of using their own name instead of the license's name. For example, the Apache License is very appropriate for many projects, except that it specifies the Apache Project and Developers. What is needed is a set of license "templates". An example of a license "template" is the BSD license as presented at www.opensource.org.

p.s. Do you really think that the OSI is approving too many licenses? Have you checked at the FSF to see how many free licenses they have approved? I count FORTY!

You're right.

[Russ Nelson]

You're quite right, you should always be concerned about the license itself. All that we do is tell people that a license grants a certain number of specific freedoms. That's all, but it's still worth doing.
-russ

Re:You're right.

[wfrp01]

I appreciate your calm rhetoric. I'm a little acerbic sometimes. I apologize.

I appreciate the OSI providing a repository for licenses, and some comparitive analysis. But I think that function would be better served by an organization that did not exclude certain licenses. The distinction of a license being declared "open" by the OSI really doesn't mean anything to me.

Re:You're right.

[Russ Nelson]

Apology accepted. So what criteria do you require of a license which makes our approval meaningless to you? Is there something missing from the OSD?
-russ

Re:You're right.

[wfrp01]

So what criteria do you require of a license which makes our approval meaningless to you?

Well, as my sig subtly suggests, I personlly favor the GPL. That said, I also favor choice. I think that it is the developer's perogative to choose any license he or she chooses, up to and including the most restrictive proprietary licenses. Good licenses, like good code, should stand on their merits.

Your question is somewhat difficult to answer, because I already know what license I personally prefer. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know what license to use. In that case, I think it's more useful to be able to review the panoply of available licenses, rather than a select few. I feel like the terms "open" or "open source" tend to confuse matters somewhat, because even among those licenses that qualify (according to the OSD), there can be vast differences.

Generalizations can be useful, but they can also be misleading. All "open source" licenses are not alike. For those about to enter the muck, I think this categorization might confuse more than enlighten. If I were starting from scratch, I would prefer to see an unbiased (ha;) collection/comparison of any/all available licenses, not just a clubbish few.

Re:You're right.

[Russ Nelson]

Well, but what if you want to lift some software and put it into a GPL'ed package? You should at least start by restricting your search to OSI Certified Open Source, eh? I understand that you're only going to use the GPL for your own software, yes. But that doesn't make our approval meaningless.
-russ

Caution suggested

[Russ Nelson]

I recommend being cautious about "releasing your code into the public domain". The problem is that there is *no* language in the Berne Convention whereby an author can bypass the lapsing of copyright which puts a work into the public domain. Some countries treat author's rights as inalienable, so they cannot put something in to the public domain.

Much better just to license your code under one of the licenses whose only restriction is "Don't remove this copyright."
-russ

Re:Caution suggested

[Russ Nelson]

Of course! I wouldn't pick any other type of license. Actually, if I had the choice, I would probably pick the GPL. For sentient software, it's the license of choice.
-russ

Re:Any license is only as effective

[Russ Nelson]

And your ability to hire lawyers is related to whether or not you have registered the copyright on your software. It makes the difference between triple damages and statutory penalties. So go register that copyright!
-russ

Why they choose the GPL

[Srin Tuar]

Even though it has numerous bashers- and seems to be consumer oriented rather than developer oriented, alot of new OSS projects go with the GPL.

The reason is simple: they want developers. There seem to be more people coming out of the woodwork to contribute to a fledgling GPL project than for any other type. This is especially true for new projects with few developers.

Its also a guaranteed way to get users. If your project is useful or fun at all, then the license
will attract at least a few eyes. Users certainly like to recieve GPL programs- even if they never download the binaries.

Ironically- most sucessfull large OSS projects fall under less restrictive yet gpl compatible licenses. (Xf86, perl, python, apache, postgresql, moz, libpng)

On the other hand- Gnome, KDE, samba, gcc, glibc, vim, emacs, and the linux kernel themselves are exceptions. The desktop environments are easy to explain- theyre a collection of small projects. And the linux kernel has exceptions- such as for loadable modules.

Personnaly I license my stuff under the GPL or LGPL. Ive been burned by shareware with small bugs that I was dying to fix- so I try not to make anything that contributes to that model (no bsd/artistic). I just want people to have the source- and I dont know hov that could offend anyone.

The Raptor license does that

[hawk]

> Isn't it time that there was a dynamic Open Source license which
>had a series of checkboxes that dumped out the license appropriate
>to your project at the end of it

The Raptor licenses do that. Noone uses them (ok, and if I'd put them all in one place it might help :)

Roughly as follows. Add up the clauses used to specify a license as "Raptor n"

Section 0:
You may do anything you damned well feel like with this source code, save as restricted under later clauses.

Section 1:
Any derived work must retain the copyright notices contained herein.

Section 2:
Any derived work must be under this license.

Section 4:
You must make the source code available in the same manner as the binary distribution for no more than duplication and shipping costs.

Section 8:
No derived work may link to any code not assimilible by this license.

Section 16:
No derivative work may be released under a license which restricts the ability to combine software under differing licenses in any manner.

Section 32:
Any distributions of source code or binaries must be made without modification: all modifications must be patches to source code unless written permission is obtained from the copyright holder.

Section 64:
No modified version may be distributed under the same name as this software.

Section 128:
Any advertising or packaging for this product must contain the acknowledgement
"RMS is a nunu-head" [phrase will vary]

Section 256:
The authors have realized that their actions conflicted with the terms stated in the original license. The original license was Raptor [number], while the correct and binding license is Raptor [number] with the following additional provisions
[provisions]

Section 512:
Changes to this license may be made by the following entities in the following manner:
[governance terms]

Notes:
Raptor 0 is all but public domain (it doesn't assign the copyright).

Raptor 1 is pretty much BSD/X

The GPL is pretty close to Raptor 15.

Clause 16 is a poison pill to prevent assimilation by the GPL for those who object to its proprty of only taking code from other licenses but not sharing back.

32 is Pine-ish

64 is Artistic License-ish

128 is old BSD

256 is for situations such as where software purports to release under GPL, but from day 1 had dependencies upon closed source software. The current Lyx license is like this.

I'm perionally partial to a stock 145, but . . .

:)

hawk, who reluctantly left the phrase "including coordinating nuclear attacks on Australia, plotting the overthrow of your government, or exterminating an endangered species" out of clause 0.

Re:France

[cyberdonny]

Terrorists already hit France at a chemical plant

According to Libération, the explosion was due to an accident, rather than terroristm.

Re:Red Software

[frknfrk]

let's see...

nazism, fascism, and totalitarianism...

well, i don't see any of those having any effect on 'communist philosophy', so no, the FSF HQ should not worry about being bombed (at least by GWB).

Re:Open Source licenses are so confusing...

[update()]

I asked it, and got this response:

Human: What license should you be released under?
Robot: I BE RELEASED

Well, there you go!

Re:Just use the bloddy GPL or LGPL

[Black Parrot]

> Although both of these licenses are well thought out and purposefull, the social agenda bound up with them is anathma to many open source developers.

FWIW, every license is bound up with some social agenda.

X.Net does NOT specify jurisdiction

[Compulawyer]

When I saw the /. summary, I was concerned. Then I read the license. A true jurisdiction provision states that any disputes must be litigated in a specified forum (usually the home city/state of the company that wrote the license). Such provisions can be extremely burdensone, even to the pint where under the right circumstances, courts will refuse to enfore such provisions.

Thankfully, the X.Net license does not do this. What it has is a Choice of Law provision which is drastically different. It specifies that no matter where a dispute is litigated, the court must apply California state law and United States (federal) law.

I can see where this could potentially lead to problems, however -- courts generally (especially state courts)don't like to have to use another state's laws in their own courtrooms. Also, what happens if California decides to enact the UCITA?

All in all, the X.Net license is a model of simplicity and clarity.

Code re-use

[Ogerman]

This whole licensing thing is turning into a mess. If I want to write an application and re-use bits and pieces of a dozen other packages which are "Open Source approved" but use different licenses, I'm basically out of luck because I would be violating every license by combining the code and adding a bunch of my own. So much for "free as in speech" and the idea that Open Source helps reduce 'wheel reinventing.' This situation is especially annoying, of course, if the program I'm writing is solely a personal project without any commercial intent whatsoever. Is there a good answer to this scenario?

Re:Code re-use

[Arandir]

Is there a good answer to this scenario?

That's one reason why I choose to use the BSD license. Everyone can use my code without having to worry about running afoul of any legal clause.

It's a pain in the butt having to reinvent the wheel just because the only wheels you can find are proprietary and closed. But it's every bit of a pain to reinvent the wheel because the existing wheels are open but legally incompatible with the axles.

Solution? Let the free market of licenses decide. If you take a good look, there are a great many licenses but only a small handful that are used by more than one project. It seems to me that the market is deciding upon (L)GPL, MPL, and BSD/MIT as the major licenses, with a few more minor licenses. If you look at those big three, you'll see that they can be classified as "strong copyleft", "weak copyleft" and "unrestricted". They balance nicely.

If you don't want people having to reinvent the wheel with regards to your own code, then choose one of those "big" three. Choose (L)GPL if you want strong copyleft, MPL if you want weak copyleft, and BSD or MIT if you want unrestricted.

Re:Code re-use

[dvdeug]

You might also want to note that Mozilla is going to the (ugly, IMO) MPL/GPL/LGPL for its licensing, so that it can be used in LGPL and GPL projects. MPL/GPL is also a nice mix, as it gives you compatibity with the GPL.

To me, it looks like the market prefers some version of the Artistic license to the MPL.

Re:Code re-use

[Arandir]

To me, it looks like the market prefers some version of the Artistic license to the MPL.

I would have mentioned that, except that virtually all AL licensed code is also dual licensed with the GPL (ala Perl). The MPL though is used by quite a bit of code outside of Mozilla, and is very popular in the Java community.

Dual licensing is an interesting concept, and I have no doubt that we will see more of it.

Re:Red Software

[frknfrk]

uh...

communism: a theory advocating elimination of private property.

totalitarianism: A totalitarian political system is dominated by a monopolistic political party suffused with the ambition to transform society, gripped by a single chiliastic and 'totalistic' ideology which pulverizes all rival and local belief systems, and which uses organized terror systematically to crush its opponents, maintains a monopoly of the mass media of communications, subordinates the legal system to political imperatives, presides over a centrally controlled economy, and is territorially expansionist.

they don't look very similar to me...

Re:RMS Can Lick my Balls

[Arandir]

Okay, I really don't like the GNU philosophy, and sometimes find RMS to be a boor. I would never choose the GPL for any of my own projects.

But at least I have a brain! Why would anyone choose to use the GPL? That's easy! I may not agree with them, but it's not my choice to make. I can think of several projects where the GPL is the most appropriate license to use.

All the BSD and Artistic License fans just wish you would go away, because you aren't helping the cause any. Hmmm, maybe you really are RMS in disguise trying to make it seem like we're all irrational fanatics.

Re:RMS Can Lick my Balls

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

AC writes:

> The way it would work:
> You license your code such that it is Open.
> I take your code gratefully and change it a
> little.
> I build the binary and release the binary as
> my own product with attribution given to your
> product.

There's the problem. The people who write GPL code (myself included) explicitly don't want you to be able to "release only the binary" if you're using our code.

If you don't like it, don't use our code, write your own. I don't see you complaining that you can't use code from Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc. Why do you think GPL code is any different ?

If you don't like the costs of the license, don't use the code.

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Re:RMS Can Lick my Balls

[Malcontent]

Then he would actually have to think and write his own code. Don't you see? he wants to use other peoples code but does not want to honor their terms. That's the crux of the matter here. He wants something for nothing.

Re:RMS Can Lick my Balls

[Malcontent]

Nice series of speculations and nonsense there. The FSF is needed because they fight for their (and our) rights. It's an organzied and somewhat funded agency which has some clout and is willing to go to court to defend their license. I sure as hell don't have the resources to fight corporations if they steal my code but the FSF may.

Everybody has a right to try and sell their point of view and to lobby whoever they want. MS and other software companies are lobbying right now to try and make open source developement a crime and you fret over the FSF. Get some perspective

No good solution

[Russ Nelson]

Well, the problem is that there *is* no good solution. The people who have chosen different licenses have done so because they wish the software to be distributed with the particular set of restrictions. If the licenses are compatible, then you have no problem. But how do you determine this? It's not obvious.

If you're not going to distribute the software, you have no problem. But I think you want to be able to give the software away without charging for it.
-russ

Re:The Real Problem With License Proliferation...

[Russ Nelson]

but the users have to understand them all. The main question user's have being, "Can I make copies of this?"

Great! You've just reinvented OSI Certified Open Source. If we've approved the license, then you can copy it. That's the whole point.
-russ

Re:What's With the GNU?

[Russ Nelson]

Ya got me. Complain to Hemos (but he'll just complain to us, saying "Yo! Where's that OSI logo you started working on, lemme see, *three* years ago", and he'll be right.).
-russ