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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withdrawn because the license-discuss mailing list convinced the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?
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
I for one, as the author of the DSPL, the license that is going back for further discussion, would love to hear what slashdot people think about it. I can't comment on the others, but it is rather a departure from the traditional open source license...
The FSF's definition of Free Software requires that "A free program must be available for commercial use".
"freeware" is a blanket term that usually refers to any program in binary form or source code that is given away. In other words the "free" in "freeware" means free-as-in-beer, or stuff you don't pay for. For that reason it is extremely general and nonspecific. Both "Open Source" and "Free Software" are much more specific than "freeware". These days, the word freeware has come mostly to refer to software that is available for free in executable binary format only and is closed source.
Try this, this (Slashdot story here) and this. HTH.