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Google Goes After Open Source Licensing Cruft

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the wheel-reinvention dept.

pacopico writes "Google has secret plans to put out its own open source software license, according to this story in The Register. Apparently, Google's efforts will center around developing a simplified open source license that makes it easier for developers to stay "within the spirit" of the license in addition to the law. Chris DiBona at Google was asked about the plans but won't budge with details yet. Still, The Register claims that Google's efforts could improve the license proliferation issues facing the OSI."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. We are NOT creating a new license by gstein · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is just stupid. We are not... repeat NOT... creating a new license.

    On Google Code, we are taking a stand AGAINST license proliferation -- you can only use one of eight licenses there. And I've been thinking of dropping it to seven (remove MPL). Creating our own license(s) would go completely against our philosophy.

    No. The simple answer is that we like to encourage people to use GPLv3 or Apache for their software, depending upon their philosophy. Dropping back to just those two licenses would be ideal. The FLOSS world would be SO much better if there were just a couple licenses because it would radically simplify the use/combination of software.

    Sheesh.

    1. Re:We are NOT creating a new license by gstein · · Score: 4, Informative

      About 9% of the projects on Google Code use the "new" BSD, so we're keeping that. No worries :-)

      GPLv2, GPLv3, and Apache -licensed projects make up two-thirds of all projects.

  2. Re:There are only two licenses I care about by gstein · · Score: 2, Informative

    That thinking was exactly why I included MPL in the list of licenses on Google Code. It was a mistake though... in practice, nobody uses it (about 2% of projects on Google Code). To further reduce proliferation, I've been thinking about removing it as a choice (and grandfathering existing projects who use it).

  3. Re:There are only two licenses I care about by BrainInAJar · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's unfortunate that it's not in more widespread use.

    It's a good class of licenses, but The largest problems with the MPL are that everyone creates their own minor variant ( apple's licence, Sun's CDDL, myriads more) and that the GPL gets so much press time (people assume open source = GPL, so that's what they release their code under)