Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the he-should-start-an-organization-or-six dept.

jammag writes "Bruce Perens, who wrote the original licensing rules for Open Source software in 1997, notes that there are a sprawling 73 open source licenses currently in existence. But he identifies an essential four — well, actually just two — that developers, companies, and individuals need. In essence, he cuts through the morass and shows developers, in particular, how to protect their work. (And yes, he favors GPL3 over GPL2.) For his own coding work, he's fond of the 'sharing with rules' license, which stays true to the Open Source ethos of shared code yet also enables him to get paid by companies who use it in their commercial products."

3 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Hi again by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi Folks,

    I happen to be at my desk again today, and can discuss this article, if any of you have questions or, more likely, comments :-)

    If I write 30 responses, there will be a break. Slashdot locks me out for four hours after 30 postings from one IP.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  2. Re:A question of values by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

    Obviously you need a license that matches your values.

    The purpose of my article is to get you to explore those values and select a set of licenses that really match them. Some of the people who select GPL do so not for Richard's given reasons but for business purposes. I would not want to mislead them that their values demand a "gift" style license which is less effective for their particular business purpose. And making Free Software under the BSD license is not incompatible with Richard's philosophy. Remember that Richard is against software being copyrighted, and BSD licensing is pretty close to abandonment of copyright.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  3. Re:GFDL versus CC-BY-SA; noncommercial licenses by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

    I agree that GFDL is a botch. I used the Open Content License (otherwise mostly unknown today) for my own books. My problem with Creative Content is that it's one name over a broad spectrum of incompatible licenses that have few rights in common other than the right to read the text at all. Can/can't distribute, can/can't do it commercially, can/can't modify, and so on.

    --
    Bruce Perens.