Google Goes After Open Source Licensing Cruft

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."

Comments

Kind of like...

[Frosty Piss]

GPLv2?

Ironic

[JoshJ]

So Google's solution to "there are too many open source licenses!" is... to make another one?

Re:Ironic

[Justin205]

No, Google's solution is to make *Google's* license, and use that. And try to make everyone else use it, perhaps.

I wonder how it'll incorporate advertisements (Google's main source of revenue) into it.

maybe something modular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking regards the Creative Commons license, which is almost like a license family. By having a comprehensive set of well-specified "modules", it allows content generators to pick the right fit for their output according to their needs and desires while at the same time being standardized enough that content consumers don't have to read over every word of the license with a fine toothed comb to figure out what is and isn't allowed.

Of course, the pragmatist in me thinks that if "the community" (gag) paid half the attention to fixing bugs and/or writing features (IN THAT ORDER) that "the community" pays to pointless IANAL-but-I'll-play-one-on-slashdot license wrangling then the Year of the Linux Desktop (pick your paradise here) would be last year instead of Real Soon Now.

Re:maybe something modular?

[AuMatar]

Which is why Creative Commons is absolutely fucking useless. "It has a Creative Commons license"- so what? That could mean anything, from public domain to absolutely no rights whatsoever (yes, there is a CC license where distribution is not allowed). Saying something is CC licensed means nothing unless you add in 15 acronyms afterwards, which you then have to figure out what they mean and how they legally interact. The current OSI mess is preferable to that- you know whats meant when someone says GPLv2, BSD, LGPL, etc.

Re:maybe something modular?

[ChrisMounce]

Just because the licenses have confusing names doesn't make them "absolutely f***ing useless."

There are only two licenses I care about

[DaleGlass]

GPL and BSD.

IMO, those represent very well the two different approaches to the problem. The rest are a needless complication. Besides, their meaning and implications are understood very well, so I don't see what Google is going to achieve by creating their own.

Re:There are only two licenses I care about

[BrainInAJar]

I'll add to that MPL. GPL vs. MPL vs. BSD is "make all code free" vs "keep my code free" vs "do as you wish"

May or may not be happening...

[fsmunoz]

We also discuss Google's super-secret project that may or may not be happening around creating a new open source software licensing model.

Google to Change the World with New Open Source License

* Subhead - We might be making this up

Well, at least they're honest.

Anyway, assuming this is true... I don't see the big difference or importance. In one way everyone is free to choose and create a licence that suits his needs. On the other the creation of yet another licence that means the same than already existing ones isn't really something to be in awe about. If it provides more "legal protection" people will complain it's legalese, if it doesn't then it's no different from dozens of other ones. A "simplified open source license that makes it easier for developers to stay "within the spirit" of the license in addition to the law" doesn't mean anything in concrete terms, and what is worse makes the assumption that current popular free licences somehow make it hard to do the same.

If in the last months so many interpretations were made regarding a licence as simple as the ISC licence I'm not sure any licence in the world is invulnerable to different interpretations. On that note the SFLC has issued a position regarding the GPLv2/GPLv3/BSD licences mixing that have been all the rage.

Re:May or may not be happening...

[einhverfr]

Interestingly, the SFLC link you provide doesn't answer to my main concern about GPL v3/BSDL compatibility.

They state "From the beginnings of their use, however, the permissive licenses have been understood by their licensors and licensees alike to permit the code they cover to be incorporated within larger works covered as a whole by more restrictive terms, including more restrictive FOSS licenses like the GPL as well as, indeed, by proprietary licenses. This understanding represents the uninterrupted, longstanding practice and expectation of the global information technology industry, including both its free and proprietary divisions, with vast commercial reliance on the result. As such, disruption of the established interpretation of the permissive licenses is neither likely nor desirable."

The concern I have with the GPL 3 is not the question of whether the larger work can have additional restrictions added (clearly this is allowed), but rather whether the BSD License allows restrictions to be removed from BSDL components absent copyrighted additions. This is in relation to section 7, paragraph 2, which allows anyone who merely conveys the software to remove additional permissions, not just from the "work as a whole" but additionally from "any part of" the covered work. The BSD-licensed projects I have talked with suggest that excersizing this right would violate the license since one cannot merely declare the BSD license grant to be void in the process of distributing the software.

Google is a CLOSED SOURCE company

[Anonymous Coward]

All this "summer of code" and other initiatives are just Windows dressing (oops, window dressing).

If they think FOSS is so great, why don't they release their search code under a free or OSI license (their choice)?

Now, I'm not saying Google is necessarily evil. I use their product many times a day, and I do appreciate it. But, their continued PR stuff around FOSS is annoying.

More than that

[Burz]

...those two licenses are models of simplicity compared to most proprietary licenses.

Re:people assume open source = GPL

[vagabond_gr]

RMS is a hippie Indeed, good for him.

that thinks nobody should be allowed to make non-GPL software at all. There are perfectly good reasons to believe that software (and anything the can be copied in general) should be freely used, and distributed and studied and modified, without the need of any license to enforce that. If the resource is infinite then the full use of it is ethical and it's in the society's best interest. This is what (always IMHO) RMS believes and I fully agree with him. GPL is a good way to achieve this, given then current legal system.

It wasn't until people started not paying attention to him that FOSS outside of BSD took off at all in any real sense Well, it's hard to overemphasize RMS's contribution to free software. But, in any case, RMS is just another person whose opinion you should consider when forming your own. If you don't like hippies, just ignore him.

Re:We are NOT creating a new license

[1155]

Cool. Honestly, I use it because it doesn't take 3 days to read+interpret the license.

Re:Quite ironic

[I'm Don Giovanni]

So you aren't going to try to get OSI to certify this? Even after Michael Tiemann's "If it's not OSI, then it's not 'open source'" rant?
http://www.opensource.org/node/163
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/21/1146259

I find that hard to believe.