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OSI Approves Three New Licenses
Russ Nelson writes: "In our monthly board meeting this past Wednesday, the Open Source Initiative approved three new licenses for use with OSI Certified Open Source Software: the W3C
license, the Motosoto license,
and the Open
Group Test Suite License. In other action, one license was voted down because it violated the discrimination clause of the Open Source
Definition. Another (the RTSP) was
withdrawn because the license-discuss mailing list convinced the
submittor that it wasn't ready. And one (the DSPL) goes back to
license-discuss because we disagree with their analysis and want to
re-negotiate it with them. Several people have suggested that we post the licenses that we have turned down, and explain just why they don't comply with the Open Source Definition. We don't want to discourage people from submitting licenses, knowing that their license might be held up for public notice. We'd rather encourage people with non-compliant licenses to fix them so they are compliant."
If anything will be the downfall of OSS, it is the multitude of licenses. It will cost companies too much in attorney's fees to be worth their trouble. How many licenses do we need?
More open licences give more freedom, in the sense
that developers have a greater choice over which freedoms they want to give and which they wish to keep.
Not everyone agrees with RMS's philosophy, so we
need alternatives.
Although IMHO the GPL is the best licence out there.
Open source means that you open up your intelectual property so that other can use it without fees and add their own contribution.
That's exactly what's happening here:
People take the sources of other peoples open source licences, modify them and redistribute them without having to pay any silly license fees.
So, you see the great sucess of open source here: many different licenses exist now and compete with each other and all time new licenses are created.
Some people might say now this is bad because there might be holes which evil guys can abuse, but because the license is open at once a new license is created without the hole and evil men have no chance !!!
So don't believe Microsoft with their evil anti-open source FUD: nobody uses the MS licenses beside MS themselves anymore, because they are closed and they will fail. Soon all licenses will be open source licenses because that's the only licenses people can fit to their needs wihtout paying big bucks !
And laywers can still make money just be providing advice for the licenses without needing to charge fees for the original licenses !!!
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Why not hold them up to public inspection, show why a license was turned down, and what the implications of the offending clauses were. If they archive the communications with the license authors, it may be usefull to show what the real intent of the authors was down the road in case of disputes. In a world where the shrink-wrapped you gotta agree to it before you even see it license reins supreme, I'd find this refreshing
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The FSF's definition of Free Software requires that "A free program must be available for commercial use".
If you didnt understand this so is it like this:
Open Source Software != Free Software
The clause used in that license is the same as the one used in the Artistic License. A "reasonable copying fee" could, in reality be an "outrageous copying fee" or more commonly the software can be bundled with something else for which you charge a "ludicrous proprietary fee".
/., the streets will run red with the blood of chickens. Why chickens? Because VA Chicken Processing just opened a new plant there and agreed to give everybody free chickens. They expect profitability by 2008.
So in this regard it's essentially the same as the Artistic License. I would criticize them for lifting material from the AL, possibly the most vague, unprofessional, IANAL license of all time.
ObSuicide: CmdrTaco is a big fat penis, I spit on
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
wtf was wrong with just marking it 'freeware'?
Ermmm... well in general I think that it would be a very bad idea to mark your software as freeware unless it was in fact freeware. These licences are for people who want their software to be licenced under the terms of the licence, not effectively put them into the public domain. It seems rather obvious to be saying that but I guess you were missing it.
That looks like freedom to me. Uniformization is not always good. If you can't read the licenses of everything that you run while actually caring about them, then you shouldn't be running the software.