How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need?

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."

Comments

Hi again

[Bruce Perens]

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

Re:Hi again

[Bruce Perens]

maybe you should look into asking Slashdot to give you a no-flood-control bit.

Slashdot, or at least commander taco, has generally been unwilling to do anything to help me.

If I had submitted this article to Slashdot directly, they would not have published it.

Bruce

Re:As many as it takes?

[Bruce Perens]

why shouldn't developers/publishers be allowed to use whatever license they want, and make up their own if nothing else meets their needs?

You are free to use your own license, containing whatever text you wish. The main limitations on you are 1) whether you can get anyone else to participate and 2) whether your license is effective in court. If your license requires me to sell my first born son into indenture, the court is not likely to uphold your license.

As you observe, standardization is desirable. One of the biggest goals of Open Source is to make more Open Source. You should be able to combine different Open Source programs into another new one, in a way the creators of the original pieces did not envision. To do this, the licenses must be compatible with each other. So, having everybody write their own is, in the long run, detrimental because all of those licenses will be incompatible with each other, or nobody will be able to understand if they are compatible or not.

So, I laid out one scenario in which lots of people and companies can use a minimal set of different Open Source licenses that fulfill the different purposes that people have for Open Source, and are compatible with each other. You are free to use that list, or ignore me.

Thanks

Bruce

Licenses that address one attorney's fear

[Bruce Perens]

So, we ended up with a modified BSD license: the standard 3-clause plus one more to address the lawyer's concerns

This is a problem. It seems that every attorney has their own fear, which they insist on writing into their own license that you must use.

But IMO the largest part of the problem is that few companies are effective at managing their own attorneys. Many technical managers feel that law is a black art and that they can only manage what they understand. Top managers with this problem tend to structure the company so that middle managers can't push back on Legal, and must do whatever Legal says. And thus, company attorneys generally get their way even on small points. A general counsel who sits on the board is even able to do this to the CEO, if the other board members aren't good at managing attorneys.

If it is imposed on the attorney that using an OSI-accepted license is important, the attorney can probably do a reality-check on their own fear. The fact that this doesn't happen is more an issue of management effectiveness than anything else.

Thanks

Bruce