OSI Hopes To Decrease Number of Licenses

Noksagt writes "Various outlets report that the OSI may cut down the increasing number of Open Source licenses. Right now there are about 50 approved licenses; incompatible licenses confuse and impede developers and end users alike. The OSDL has been pushing hard for this at LinuxWorld. Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, said 'Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.'"

Comments

Ein Volk

[pair-a-noyd]

Ein License

Re:Ein Volk

[squiggleslash]

GNU/Linux works as well as it does because developers can freely share code amongst one another. Incompatable licenses impede this. This is why we've seen a growth in the number of "dual licensed" projects, from Mozilla to QT, often (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, etc) where the original project-specific license was open source, free software, compatable but not GPL compatable.

Yes, different developers have different needs. But much of the cruft that passes for alternative licenses these days ultimately is unnecessary and incompatable with other licenses for the sake of being so. A Solaris user will not, when the OS is opened, be able to include code from Darwin and redistribute the results. An X.org user cannot include parts of XFree86 and redistribute the results. There's little reason for this: Sun and Apple want to distribute closed code and aren't willing to work with each other. Some of XFree86's developers unilaterally decided that the usual copyright attributions weren't credit enough for their work. None of these really have much to do with the type of code being written.

It sucks. It's hard to figure something's "free software" if you're not allowed to include code from other "free software" and still treat it as free software. Incompatable licenses undermine software freedom.

How can they do this?

[nlinecomputers]

I can create any damn kind of license that I want. What are they going to do. Claim it is not "Open Source" by changing the definition of Open Source. Sure it is confusing but all the different licenses exist because someone finds the GPL or the BSD license doesn't support how they want software to be distributed. Fix people then you can fix this mess.

Re:How can they do this?

[JoeBuck]

You're free to write whatever license you want; they are free to refuse to certify it.

The problem with the proliferation of licenses is that you can't mix and match software. Right now there are basically three types of open source (or free software) licenses:

• Copyleft. The GPL fits this category, as do a few other licenses like the OSL, IBM CPL, etc. Some of these exist for no other reason than to have something like the GPL without Stallman's rhetoric, but since the drafters weren't careful to maintain compatibility of conditions, you can't mix and match code.
• Copyleft restricted to a body of code; the code can be linked to other code that uses other licenses or is even proprietary. LGPL, MPL (Mozilla), and a whole host of licenses that differ just slightly from the MPL because some corporate lawyer wanted to fine-tune. Where the licenses conflict, you can still mix and match code as long as you preserve file or library boundaries.
• Non-copyleft (MIT/BSD style licenses).

These licenses differ from each other on technicalities, and on what happens with patents, or because someone wants to tweak a boundary case. Some of them give a privileged position to the original contributor, some don't.

The community would be better off if we could just get down to three basic license choices, and the use of "special exception" clauses where needed. For companies that want special privilege (like the ability to use code plus fixes using other licenses), they can ask for copyright assignment of contributions, and treat contributors well enough that they actually get it.

Re:How can they do this?

[argent]

What they really want to do is find out what your licensing goals are and encourage you to use a pre-existing license that fits those goals, rather than creating your own possibly incompatible license.

That's great , but that's not going to get anywhere NEAR three licenses. At the very least you'll need:

1. Something like QMAIL's license.

2. The Aladdin license.

3. The two main forks of the BSD license.

4. The GPL.

5. The LGPL.

6. The non-transitive GPL-alikes.

7. No commercial use variations.

That's just off the top of my head.

LGPL?

[Sim9]

I'll admit, I'm not quite sure what the "Commercial GPL" is, but I really hope that LGPL isn't eliminated. [The LGPL allows users to use a library, and not release your code that uses the library. Changes to the library source itself must be released].

Let's say I have a write a game that uses the popular library, LibSDL (a rendering library). Though open-source may be great, why should I be *forced* to GPL my game code, which has little to do with LibSDL development?

Amusing

[bonch]

Though I understand the ideas behind all these licenses, it occurs to me how amusing it is that if something was truly 100% free, it wouldn't have or need a license at all. BSD comes closest to that.

Re:Amusing

[pclminion]

The BSD license does not restrict your freedom to see code which was already in the open. It simply makes it possible for people to make their OWN modifications private.

You make it sound like the BSD license could be used to close a previous open piece of software. That's impossible. BSD license simply gives you more powerful rights over your own modifications to that software. Some people see that as a flaw, others (including myself) don't see what the big deal is about allowing other people to profit as long as it doesn't restrict our own rights to use the code we've written.

Re:Amusing

[mpcooke3]

I don't know if you comment is a troll or not.

It's fairly well established that some people believe something is more free if it has a license that restricts users ability to make versions of the software non-free whilst some people believe that software is more free if you have the right to make non-free versions.

I think regardless of how you define "free" both the BSD and GPL style licenses have different purposes.

When you say that if something was 100% free it wouldn't need a license that might be true if the world had no laws or commercial interests. That extra waft in the GPL that makes it longer than the BSD license is to make it clear that the software can't be moved from the category of "free" software to the category of "non-free" software by commercial interests.

Imagine another world (as Stallman problably does) where the law by default rather than supporting commercial interests supported freedom of software. In this world the GPL would be short and the BSD license long because the BSD license would need to explain that future versions of the software could be taken by private companies and changes withheld unlike "normal software" where future versions of the free software must remain free by default.

Matt.

Yes. That's exactly why they'll do

[sterno]

What they are doing is branding the term "Open Source" and this will not change the meaning of "open source" (note small "o" and small "s"). One of the big problems in software licensing in general is that every license is different in subtle or sometimes huge ways. If you want to do any sort of development that involves integration of pieces of other software, it can get quite complicated quickly.

Does this mean that you can't make your own license? Of course not. What it means is that if you want their official seal of approval, you likely won't get it.

I think 3 licenses might pass as a sort of Platonic ideal, but I can't really see that covering all needs in the real world. However, establishing a base line of a few simple licenses could make life much easier for smaller developers that don't really have an interest in paying a lawyer to craft them something more complex.

We African Greys...

[African Grey]

prefer the BSD license. It's not that we don't want to publish the changes we make to source code, but a lot of parrots don't have decent net access, especially in Africa. IP over avian carrier just isn't very fast, and source is a lot bigger than binaries. If you humans would get your act together and bring some kind of decent connectivity to the jungles, you'd be able to see our coding prowess for yourselves!