Michael Dolan Dot Com

Sunday, August 28th, 2005

Too many open source licenses?

I was just reading Amy Wohl’s blog and notice her post regarding the number of open source licenses. We’ve seen licenses change as “open source” has increased momentum as the “hot topic.” While many typically link “open source” with the GPL or Apache/BSD licenses, there have been a number of more recent commercial “open source” licenses that have changed the rules of the game.

One thought to leave you with: “How many commercial licenses has your company accepted?” Do you have the same license for Microsoft and Adobe software? When you really think about it, the GPL and Apache/BSD licenses have done much to actually consolidate licenses.

Is the problem the volume of open source licenses or the expanding use of “open source” with licenses that are not reflecting the terms of what we tend to call an “open source” license? I think the real problem is sorting out traditional GPL and Apache/BSD licenses and then those new ones that have a few “tricks” typically driven by corporate aspirations. I always caution against blindly accepting some of the new open source licenses because they typically often contain a legal hook for one company to maintain commercial control. It will be interesting to see how the GPL version 3 will approach these issues.