Clash of the Open Standards

Rollie Hawk writes "Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Computer Associates (CA) may agree that some housework is needed with open source licensing, but they may not be able to reconcile their views on the best solution. CA has a couple of possible solutions in mind for its proposed Template License. This license will likely be based on either Sun's Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) its own Trusted Open Source License. OSI, which does not favor corporate-centered licensing, opposes such moves on a number of grounds. Specifically, they point out that CDDL is not GPL-compatible. While acknowledging the problems with license proliferation, OSI prefers a solution involving stricter criteria (including that approved licenses must me non-duplicative, clear and understandable, and reusable) and is proposing a "three-tier system in which licenses are classified as preferred, approved or deprecated." While there is no legal requirement for any open-source license to be approved by OSI, it is currently common practice for developers to get their license blessing from it."

Comments

Re:more than two?

[squiggleslash]

FWIW, anyone who needs a fairly reasonable list of licenses will find a reasonable collection, with related discussion, here.

The OSI has a list of "approved" licenses here, but it's literally just a list (no explanation of the differences or analysis of their implications), and I get the impression the OSI is regretting approving so many of them, given most of them are incompatable with one another (some of them can be incompatable with themselves, depending on the precise circumstances!)

Re:GPL-compatible

[eviltypeguy]

Technically, it's the GPL that's incompatible with the CDDL, not the other way around. This is because the GPL states that the other code can't have any additional requirements basically.

Just a technicality...