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OpenOffice.Org Now Under LGPLv3
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Sun has moved OpenOffice.org to the LGPLv3 license. In his blog Sun's Simon Phipps cites worry over software patents as being one of their main reasons for this move: 'Upgrading to the LGPLv3 brings important new protections to the OpenOffice.org community, most notably through the new language concerning software patents. You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents, and that Sun has already taken steps in this area with a patent non-assert covenant for ODF. But the most important protection for developers comes from creating mutual patent grants between developers. LGPLv3 does this.'"
You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents
Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The LGPL is in no way "lesser" than its hideously deformed cousin the GPL. Where the second one takes and takes, the first one gives and gives. It promotes community through sharing rather than through vigorously tilting at windmills.
If the LGPL were a presidential candidate, it would be Barack Obama -- "Yes we can." The GPL would be Ron Paul -- "We need the gold standard and protectionist trade."
I've always claimed that whenever Sun wrote a strange license, it was because their lawyers told them to.
You may recollect a small war between Sun and MS over the MS effort to "embrace and extend" Java.
I suspect we'll see more GPL3 and LGPS3 as it is shown in practice to provide the same patent potection as CDDL.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people
Different licences for different purposes. And remember that before these licences came along, individuals would often release software under their own (often poorly worded) licences, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes the licences are ambiguous, or the authors feel compelled to add in all sorts of arbitrary restrictions (I guess that's their right, but it's annoying when there's no logical reason). Indeed some people still do that. When I see something that's licenced under "GPL" or "CC", I know exactly what I'm getting, and don't have to worry if I can or can't do something, or if even though it's advertised supposedly "free" I'm going to download it and find it's crippleware, trialware, or has all sorts of licence restrictions.
Recently I was looking for free graphics to use for writing games, and I came across one from years ago that had some licence saying it was free, but only for Windows because he wanted to be the one to "port" it to another platform. Huh? I thought, why should the graphics need to be changed for a different platform? Thankfully I then found a later version of the graphics which he'd sensibly released under CC.
I'm not sure that comparing to Linux distributions makes sense. You might as well complain that having thousands of pieces of software available is "confusing", and this is comparable to Linux distributions. If people just choose the first licence they come across because the rest are too confusing, that's fine.
Oh wait, no MS has several, off the top of my head, the OS, directX, media player. Office offcourse as well, but that is a seperate product. Does IE still come with one? Silverlight?
In fact most windows software comes with a EULA all written differently.
So you claim that people have no problem understanding all these different EULA's but would be confused by the far simpler opensources licences of which only about a dozen are in actuall use?
Bad troll, no cookie for you! This is 2008, we expect more nowadays. Go on, mention soundcard drivers, why don't you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As you point out, at least with open-source licenses, there are only a handful of major ones that cover the vast majority of software. Once you know about them, you can very quickly know how much control you'll have over the code, and can confidently download/install/use/modify as required.
There is no proprietary equivalent to this kind of well-organized and relatively homogeneous licensing landscape. (Of course not! Having "named" proprietary licenses would make it too easy for a customer to compare different product licenses and select the less onerous ones.)
Yawn, Solaris is probably the most capable server OS on the planet and it contains a number of technologies that even the most passionate Linux advocate would give their eye teeth to have in Linux. dtrace, ZFS, SMF etc etc.
Sun also developed Java still the most widely used application development and deployment platform for enterprise applications. It is also the largest single platform for Mobile Phones, way ahead of Symbian, Windows Mobile etc.
They have also developed the only credible alternative to MS's cash cow Office.
Not bad for a company apparently rubbish at Software development.
That's because Microsoft based their document on Sun's. I know that because the author of the Sun covenant is a colleague, because it was released at least a year before Microsoft copied it and because, after I pointed this out, Microsoft credited Sun for the original document.
I disagree, and I have explained why before on my blog. Sun's covenant is intended to empower open source developers, and Microsoft has altered the parts that make that happen. Most notably, Sun's covenant grants all patents, Microsoft's is limited to "necessary claims". That is a very major difference since it means open source developers cannot be sure they have actually been given cover by Microsoft's covenant whereas they can be certain they have by Sun's. It is deeply regerttable that Microsoft added essential claims language in this way. For those who don't follow links, I also find the conformance requirements and the patent peace asymmetry poor in Microsoft's document.
Indeed, and I am among them. However, your implication that the same applies to Sun's covenant is incorrect.