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Software Operating Systems GNU is Not Unix BSD

OSI Hopes To Decrease Number of Licenses 541

Posted by timothy from the but-licenses-are-art-in-themselves dept.
Noksagt writes "Various outlets report that the OSI may cut down the increasing number of Open Source licenses. Right now there are about 50 approved licenses; incompatible licenses confuse and impede developers and end users alike. The OSDL has been pushing hard for this at LinuxWorld. Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, said 'Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.'"
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OSI Hopes To Decrease Number of Licenses More

OSI Hopes To Decrease Number of Licenses

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  • 4 Licenses, not 3 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by networkBoy ( 774728 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:17PM (#11694304) Journal
    Does the GNU FDL (Free documentation license) fit under the GPL in that case?
    -nB

    • Re:4 Licenses, not 3 (Score:5, Informative)

      by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:22PM (#11694366) Journal
      He was talking about software licenses. Not licenses in general.
    • GNU FDL isn't a software license, its a documentation license.

    • Re:4 Licenses, not 3 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by servanya ( 321392 )
      "'Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.'"

      How about... there will be BSD because its the only FAIR license that allows ANYONE to use the code? Bah.

    • Re:4 Licenses, not 3 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 )
      The Debian folks have come out against the GFDL on the grounds that it's non-free (if you have invariant sections), and it can be incompatible with the GPL (if you have invariant sections, I guess), which means you may not be able to embed your GFDL's docs inside your GPL'd program. Their preferred license seems to be CC-by-sa.

      Really, I don't see a huge problem with the number of software licenses -- GPL is by far the most popular, and people who aren't using GPL for new projects presumably are doing so fo

  • Ein Volk (Score:5, Funny)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:17PM (#11694305)
    Ein License
    • Parent should not be modded flamebait. One license would work if everyone was the same, but we're not. Different developers and different software projects need different licenses. Many Linux newbies think that there should be one distro. Anyone who knows about GNU/Linux knows that this would not be good. I suppose we want one language now to. (yes I get the reference)

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:59PM (#11694746)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Ein Volk (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @08:09PM (#11694838)
        No. They are saying that there should be multiple licenses (for the different free-software distribution systems). However, we should also cut-down the number of licenses that are similar to each other by removing licenses that are functionally the same as another commonly-used license.

        If your license genuinely embodies another distribution/licensing system for free software (other than copyleft and effective public domaining), I'm sure they won't have a problem adding your license to the list that they encourage people to use (after it is properly checked), but most licenses are just rewordings of old ideas (with a new person/company's name at the top).

        The current number of licenses causes confusion (for prospective licensors and licensees); encourages people to write even more licenses (without properly considering alternatives, and without making sure they are legally watertight or make sense); and, worst of all, means that licenses exist which are effectively the same as each other but are incompatible (which discourages the mix-and-match creative commons which is the primary reason for software freedom in the first place).

    • Flamebait? It was supposed to be funny...
      The articl begged for that response...
    • So how do you reconcile the idea of freedom with an "approved license"? Suddenly we have a body claiming to be in control of the freedom to generate licenses!

      WTF?

      • Suddenly we have a body claiming to be in control of the freedom to generate licenses!
        No--generate any license you wish. We have a body owning the right to call something "OSI Certified." We've had that body for a long time. It has helped set standards and criteria & prevents bad licenses from getting very far in the community. It also helps cut down on the confusion of having too many license (though, according to the article, not enouch).

  • Commercial GPL (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ebooher ( 187230 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:17PM (#11694311) Homepage Journal
    What exactly would a commercial GPL be like? Doesn't that kind of go against the grain and nature of the GPL? Because when I think commercial I think "We made a change, then closed it, now we won't let you know what that change is or how it affects other GPL'd software"

    • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:3, Informative)

      by Swamii ( 594522 )
      Doesn't that [commercial GPL] kind of go against the grain and nature of the GPL?

      Uh no. The GPL is not about giving away software for free. It's about the sharing of information in the form of source code, without restrictions.

      If GPL doesn't have some sort of commercial counterpart, the company I work for will never use it -- after all, we're a company like any other, we exist to make money and earn a decent living.

      • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:3, Informative)

        by Tassach ( 137772 )

        [The GPL is] about the sharing of information in the form of source code, without restrictions.

        Not entirely accurate.

        Public Domain has no restrictions whatsoever.

        The BSD/MIT style licenses have no restrictions other than the fact that you must give credit where credit is due.

        GPL has an important restriction -- you MUST give your changes back to the community if you want to distribute them.

        Now, this may be a noble and community-minded goal, but it's still a significant restriction on the programm

        • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:5, Informative)

          by Samrobb ( 12731 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @04:15AM (#11697531) Journal
          GPL has an important restriction -- you MUST give your changes back to the community if you want to distribute them.

          <disclaimer type="IANAL">

          Nope. The GPL says nothing about giving changes back to some "community". It does say that when you distribute a binary to someone, you must make the source code for that binary avilable to them (either as part of the distribution of the binary, or on request within a limited period of time.)

          Practially speaking, this does mean that changes can and do make it back to "the community" in a lot of instances. However, it isn't required by the GPL.

          To use your own analogy - the GPL doesn't force you to put your changes on the village green. It allows you to put them on the village green, and it also allows anyone who receives them from you (directly or indirectly) to put them on the village green. That allowance greatly increases the chance that someone will put your changes on the village green, but it doesn't make it a requirement.

          </disclaimer>

        • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:3, Informative)

          by Karma Farmer ( 595141 )
          GPL has an important restriction -- you MUST give your changes back to the community if you want to distribute them.

          No, it does not. You have to give the rights under the GPL to anyone to who you give the program. But, you can be as selective as you like about who gets your code; you don't ever have to give it back, and you can give it only to the people you want to give it to.

          Of course, those people are free to do with it what they want...
    • Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.

      because you can't get rid of it, first of all, what does it mean exactly? getting 'rid' of BSD is just as possible as any other license. this isn't quite clear

      secondly, 'a commercial version of the GPL' , is an oxymoron, there are many clauses in the GPL which prevent GPL software to be ideal for commercial software; i mean sure, the GPL allows it, but in

    • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ark42 ( 522144 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMmorpheussoftware.net> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:31PM (#11694450) Homepage

      Commercial GPL is something like the NPL/MPL licenese that let Netscape keep some code to themselves while still sharing and modifying the Mozilla codebase, I think.

      Of course, I see a clear need for LGPL as well here, since that is different than just GPL or MPL or BSD, and very useful indeed.
      LGPL is what lets me use things like libPNG or ZLib in my commercial application without giving away the unrelated source code to my entire program. LGPL is a good thing if you value PNG support in other programs that aren't going to be using GPL themselves.
      • Agreed, most whole heartedly! The LGPL is A Very Good Thing.

      • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:3, Informative)

        by reynaert ( 264437 )

        LGPL is what lets me use things like libPNG or ZLib in my commercial application

        Neither libpng nor zlib is LGPL-licensed. Both use a unique, BSD-like license. Seeing you claim to develop commercial application, I would have hoped you were more careful with licenses.

    • Yeah, I don't get that comment at all. The F/OSS licences created by comercial entities are rarely GPL-like. Most of them are LGPL-like, with CYA patent clauses, and some special vendor privledges added. I find it very odd that LGPL is missing of that list. It's ability to allow linking to any software, while requiring modifications to itself be LGPL, makes it an excellent license for many situations where GPL and BSD would be less than ideal.

      Personally, I have rarely seen a situation that one of GPL, LGP

    • GPL - Preamble. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by temojen ( 678985 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:44PM (#11694599) Journal
      Businesses don't like the rant at the beginning, but do like the terms and conditions.

    • Re:Commercial GPL (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sepluv ( 641107 )

      What exactly would a commercial GPL be like?

      That is a very good question because commercial use (inc. copying, distribution and modification) has to be allowed in order for any license to meet the terms of the OSD (to be OSI-certified). The GNU GPL seems to be very commercially viable (indeed the most commercially-viable free-software license) and many software companies are making money from using it. How could a license be more commercial? Surely whether a license is commercial is an either/or thing.

  • Unless of course, it dies!

  • LGPL? CC? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Roguelazer ( 606927 ) <Roguelazer AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:18PM (#11694323) Homepage Journal
    What about LGPL and CreativeCommons licenses? Libraries and artwork (books, websites, etc) still ought to have their open-source licenses available...
    • LGPL is important, because you can not legally link a GPL licensed library into a non-GPL application. That may not directly affect free software, but getting lots of people to use free software does, and licensing libraries under the LGPL makes them more usable to more people.

      I agree there also needs to be a license geared more towards documents, like CC, or the GNU Free Documentation License, or something.

  • Anyone know what that means? GPL dosen't prohibit commercial use.
    • It'd most likely be a license with a provision of source code sharing dependant on whether the software is purchased.
      • Under GPL you need only distribute the source to those who you ditribute the binary. Also, charging for sharing would go completely against the GPL.
        • Under GPL you need only distribute the source to those who you ditribute the binary.

          What's your point? Either you give a binary along with source, or you just give source. In both cases, you give source.

  • How can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nlinecomputers ( 602059 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:19PM (#11694332)
    I can create any damn kind of license that I want. What are they going to do. Claim it is not "Open Source" by changing the definition of Open Source. Sure it is confusing but all the different licenses exist because someone finds the GPL or the BSD license doesn't support how they want software to be distributed. Fix people then you can fix this mess.

    • Yes. That's exactly why they'll do (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sterno ( 16320 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:29PM (#11694434) Homepage
      What they are doing is branding the term "Open Source" and this will not change the meaning of "open source" (note small "o" and small "s"). One of the big problems in software licensing in general is that every license is different in subtle or sometimes huge ways. If you want to do any sort of development that involves integration of pieces of other software, it can get quite complicated quickly.

      Does this mean that you can't make your own license? Of course not. What it means is that if you want their official seal of approval, you likely won't get it.

      I think 3 licenses might pass as a sort of Platonic ideal, but I can't really see that covering all needs in the real world. However, establishing a base line of a few simple licenses could make life much easier for smaller developers that don't really have an interest in paying a lawyer to craft them something more complex.

    • Re:How can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Yobgod Ababua ( 68687 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:31PM (#11694451)
      What they really want to do is find out what your licensing goals are and encourage you to use a pre-existing license that fits those goals, rather than creating your own possibly incompatible license.

      Why they want to do this is because the fewer number of licenses that are in use, the more likely it will be that your software's license is compatible with another piece of software's license... permitting both of you to benefit from each other's work and allowing all of your end-users, in turn, to benefit.

      Keeping a small number of licenses also makes it easier for people to regularly review them and make sure that, legally, they are doing what they are intended to do. This can be a much more difficult endeavor than you think, especially when we want licenses to work across international and legal boundaries.

      Sure, you can always roll your own, and no one can stop you from offering your copyrighted work under whatever license you choose, but if you pick from a limited set of known and tested licenses, you benefit from knowing that it's solid, you benefit from knowing that it's compatible with all the other software released under the same license, and we all benefit from having fewer 'license glitches' get in the way of what we care about... making better software (some us want to charge for it, some don't, that's not really relevant).

      • Re:How can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by argent ( 18001 ) <peter@slashdot . ... t a r o nga.com> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @08:00PM (#11694749) Homepage Journal
        What they really want to do is find out what your licensing goals are and encourage you to use a pre-existing license that fits those goals, rather than creating your own possibly incompatible license.

        That's great , but that's not going to get anywhere NEAR three licenses. At the very least you'll need:

        1. Something like QMAIL's license.

        2. The Aladdin license.

        3. The two main forks of the BSD license.

        4. The GPL.

        5. The LGPL.

        6. The non-transitive GPL-alikes.

        7. No commercial use variations.

        That's just off the top of my head.
    • Just like UNIX(tm). Then they can restrict unauthorized use of the term Open Source(tm).

      Just kidding, for now...

    • Re:How can they do this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:37PM (#11694539) Homepage

      You're free to write whatever license you want; they are free to refuse to certify it.

      The problem with the proliferation of licenses is that you can't mix and match software. Right now there are basically three types of open source (or free software) licenses:

      • Copyleft. The GPL fits this category, as do a few other licenses like the OSL, IBM CPL, etc. Some of these exist for no other reason than to have something like the GPL without Stallman's rhetoric, but since the drafters weren't careful to maintain compatibility of conditions, you can't mix and match code.
      • Copyleft restricted to a body of code; the code can be linked to other code that uses other licenses or is even proprietary. LGPL, MPL (Mozilla), and a whole host of licenses that differ just slightly from the MPL because some corporate lawyer wanted to fine-tune. Where the licenses conflict, you can still mix and match code as long as you preserve file or library boundaries.
      • Non-copyleft (MIT/BSD style licenses).

      These licenses differ from each other on technicalities, and on what happens with patents, or because someone wants to tweak a boundary case. Some of them give a privileged position to the original contributor, some don't.

      The community would be better off if we could just get down to three basic license choices, and the use of "special exception" clauses where needed. For companies that want special privilege (like the ability to use code plus fixes using other licenses), they can ask for copyright assignment of contributions, and treat contributors well enough that they actually get it.

  • LGPL? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sim9 ( 632381 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:21PM (#11694347)
    I'll admit, I'm not quite sure what the "Commercial GPL" is, but I really hope that LGPL isn't eliminated. [The LGPL allows users to use a library, and not release your code that uses the library. Changes to the library source itself must be released].

    Let's say I have a write a game that uses the popular library, LibSDL (a rendering library). Though open-source may be great, why should I be *forced* to GPL my game code, which has little to do with LibSDL development?

    • Re:LGPL? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pclminion ( 145572 )
      Though open-source may be great, why should I be *forced* to GPL my game code, which has little to do with LibSDL development?

      The usual response to that is that if you aren't willing to play the OSS game, you aren't allowed to use OSS code.

      I think it's a juvenile attitude. "I willfully don't profit off my stuff so nobody else should either."

      Of course, people are free to license things as they wish. I just think it's elitist to redefine the meaning of Open Source on a whim so that people who choose to

      • Re:LGPL? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by femto ( 459605 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @08:15PM (#11694912) Homepage
        Yet

        "I willfully don't profit off my stuff so nobody else should either."

        Is the same logic as

        "I'm willfully profiting off my stuff so nobody else should.",

        which is the attitude of most companies, people and other copyright holders.

        I'm willing to call most copyright holders juvenile. Are you?

        Stop acting like a child William, RIAA, MPAA, ...

      • Re:LGPL? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RedWizzard ( 192002 )
        I think it's a juvenile attitude. "I willfully don't profit off my stuff so nobody else should either."
        Juvenile? Isn't it the commercial entities who don't want to pay for development the ones with the juvenile attitude? "You gave these people your software for free, so why can't I have it for free?" What is stopping these commercial interests from approaching the authors and buying non-GPL licenses for the code?

    • Re:LGPL? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:39PM (#11694560) Homepage
      My guess was that the LGPL was what the guy was thinking of by "commercial GPL".

    • Re:LGPL? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

      Though open-source may be great, why should I be *forced* to GPL my game code, which has little to do with LibSDL development?

      If your game truly has little to do with LibSDL, it is not a derivative work, and therefore doesn't have to be GPL'ed. I doubt you could sucessfully argue that a game isn't a derivative work of the rendering library it depends upon, though.

      The question of whether linking a library into an application makes the result a derivative work is an open one. The FSF has it's opionion [gnu.org],

  • Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bonch ( 38532 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:21PM (#11694351)
    Though I understand the ideas behind all these licenses, it occurs to me how amusing it is that if something was truly 100% free, it wouldn't have or need a license at all. BSD comes closest to that.
    • ... if something was truly 100% free, it wouldn't have or need a license at all.

      The idea behind the GPL isn't free software, nor even freedom for software. It's to preserve your freedom to see, modify and share software. That takes a license.

      BSD comes closest to that.

      Well, that would be right for your original misunderstanding.

      Unfortunately, the BSD license is better at preserving your freedom to take away my freedoms than it is at preserving my freedom to see, modify and share.

      • Re:Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:36PM (#11694517)
        The BSD license does not restrict your freedom to see code which was already in the open. It simply makes it possible for people to make their OWN modifications private.

        You make it sound like the BSD license could be used to close a previous open piece of software. That's impossible. BSD license simply gives you more powerful rights over your own modifications to that software. Some people see that as a flaw, others (including myself) don't see what the big deal is about allowing other people to profit as long as it doesn't restrict our own rights to use the code we've written.

      • Your free to choose a BSD licence or not. No one is forcing you to use a BSD licence so it can not take any of your freedoms away. Anything that is 'free with the following restrictions that you use it within our ideals,' as in the GPL, is not free. You won't get much freer then a BSD licence.

    • Re:Amusing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mpcooke3 ( 306161 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:41PM (#11694571) Homepage
      I don't know if you comment is a troll or not.

      It's fairly well established that some people believe something is more free if it has a license that restricts users ability to make versions of the software non-free whilst some people believe that software is more free if you have the right to make non-free versions.

      I think regardless of how you define "free" both the BSD and GPL style licenses have different purposes.

      When you say that if something was 100% free it wouldn't need a license that might be true if the world had no laws or commercial interests. That extra waft in the GPL that makes it longer than the BSD license is to make it clear that the software can't be moved from the category of "free" software to the category of "non-free" software by commercial interests.

      Imagine another world (as Stallman problably does) where the law by default rather than supporting commercial interests supported freedom of software. In this world the GPL would be short and the BSD license long because the BSD license would need to explain that future versions of the software could be taken by private companies and changes withheld unlike "normal software" where future versions of the free software must remain free by default.

      Matt.
    • The BSD license does more than purely dedicate code to the public domain. The license also disclaims tort and contract liability for any problems resulting from the code.

      So, for example, if someone uses your code library as part of the software in a dialysis machine, and a bug in your code winds up crashing the machine, and killing the patient, you theoretically cannot be sued for wrongful death. However, no one, to my knowledge, has actually tested the legal validity of the disclaimer in court at this po

  • LGPL? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cowboy76Spain ( 815442 )
    The LGPL will be covered by the Commercial GPL? Many of the protocol implementations come with it. Anyway, after RTFA it seems that maybe it is not so important, the OSI does not decide which licenses are valid, it just enforces some of them, so those approved by the OSI would still be in use (Or at least this is what I understood from it)
  • I'm kinda surprised no mention of MPL in that list... I figured that'd be one of them.

  • Uhhh.. How does this impact SourceForge? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:25PM (#11694395)
    In order to host your project on SourceForge it must use an OSI-conforming license. If the list of OSI-conforming licenses is drastically reduced what will happen to all the projects on SourceForge which don't use the GPL or BSD licenses? Will they just be booted off the server? Forced to switch licenses?

  • Ah, standards. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:29PM (#11694431)
    > Right now there are about 50 approved licenses; incompatible licenses confuse and impede developers and end users alike.

    But that's what's so wonderful about standards. There are so many to choose from. Besides, if you really have a problem with a certain license, you should have the right to view, modifiy, and release your own license based on the work of those who've written licenses before you.

    Join us now and share the licenses!

    You'll be free, lawyers, you'll be free!
    You'll be free, lawyers, you'll be free!

    Lobbyists get piles of money,
    That is true, lawyers, that is true.
    But they cannot help their neighbors;
    That's not good, lawyers, that's not good.

    When we have enough licenses
    At our call, lawyers, at our call,
    We'll throw out that dirty li*cough*software,
    Ever more, lawyers, ever more.

    Sorry, RMS, I had to. The muse knows what it wants, even if it wants to give me a first-class ticket to hell with window seating.

  • Commercial version of GPL? They want GNU to bend over?

  • We African Greys... (Score:5, Funny)

    by African Grey ( 859889 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:32PM (#11694478)
    prefer the BSD license. It's not that we don't want to publish the changes we make to source code, but a lot of parrots don't have decent net access, especially in Africa. IP over avian carrier just isn't very fast, and source is a lot bigger than binaries. If you humans would get your act together and bring some kind of decent connectivity to the jungles, you'd be able to see our coding prowess for yourselves!

  • There will always be Freedom, always be BSD... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nweaver ( 113078 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:39PM (#11694559) Homepage
    BSD will always stick around, because there are some of us who view the BSD lisences as MORE free: someone can create a derivitive work without having significant liscence restrictions on that derivative work.

    I work on computer security. I don't like viruses, either in my code or in the liscencing.

  • Here's a different idea... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StevenMaurer ( 115071 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:41PM (#11694566) Homepage
    I think they're going to run into the same problem that DRM manufacturers have: there's no benefit to the people who are untimately in charge.

    In this case, it isn't the 'paying customers', it's the developing free software engineers. The proliferation of licenses comes directly from the fact that developers have found some aspect of the GPL or LGPL to be too onerous to release under. And there is no way you're going to get them to alter their license just because Stallman thinks they should.

    So here's a different idea. Instead of trying to reduce the number of Open Source licenses, people should instead come up with a comparison chart. Much like the Unix rosetta stone except for legalese, identifying general contract features in common (or different) between them.

    That way developers can see the difference in a single place, and pick the best license for their particular purpose.

  • BSD license is't dying (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:42PM (#11694578) Homepage Journal
    What's wrong with BSD? It's GPL, without requiring release of source code, even if you distribute a revised, executable version. It's not as viral, but many developers don't require that perpetuation, and many developers require that source we use not require that perpetuation. It shouldn't - and won't - disappear, because it has a very useful function.

  • Put away your crack pipe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:42PM (#11694584) Homepage Journal
    Maybe it's time for the "Open Source" movement to die. After all, the founders of this movement (Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Parens, I'm lookin' at you) havn't had anything official to say about Open Source in a while (oh wait, there was that Java thing, you're ok Bruce). I thought "to reduce confusion" was what the Open Source movement set out to achieve, being that Free Software just wasn't straight forward enough for them. The result of this mess has been one person after another putting the "openness" of the source code ahead of the freedom to modify and redistribute the source code (yes, Microsoft, Sun, X11, Apache, and that worm who wrote the packet filter the OpenBSD project rewrote in a week). It's amazing to me the number of people who have no problem understanding exactly what I'm talking about when I say Free Software, compared to the number of people who are now confused about Open Source. Maybe it's the use of capital letters. Ahh, what irony that is, we could have avoided endless debates about Free Software vs Open Source if we'd just capitalized "free".

  • It's not too many licenses (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:43PM (#11694593) Homepage Journal
    It's that OSI has been too eager to approve licenses, and its standards are a little too lax.

    If they had required that new licenses bring some real benefit to the community of users and developers, rather than merely benefitting the company which proposes it, there wouldn't be 58 licenses.

    I don't think that 58 licenses is necessarily too many, but 58 infitesimally different, bad licenses is definitely too many.

    I think that OSI can't afford to dump on the people whose licenses they've certified, so this talk of reducing the number of licenses to 3 is silly. I think that they could afford to deprecate most of those 58 (e.g., ``That license is still certified, but only for software which was issued under that license before Nonuary 2006.''), and make sure that they are a little more selective about what they approve in the future.

  • This won't be easy - tearing people away from their, "but I need this clause" licenses.....

    How about taking the 3 or so licenses as mentioned, but allowing each (or some) to have a number of options that could be opted for on a case by case basis? Rather than a one-size-fits-all, perhaps an aproach like the various Creative Commons licenses [creativecommons.org] would be better for the entire community?

    Find some common elements from a large number licenses from the "Approved" Open Source License Collection [opensource.org] and make some of the most common language available as "plug-ins" to some sort of meta-license that encompasses a large cross-section of what's currently being used.

    Rather than chooing a particular license just because it has some sort of attribution or distribution clause the author is interested in, bring consistency to the community but still allow individuals to apply special clauses to the documents that protect (or ensure the freedom of) their work.

    Just an idea...
  • This is supposed to be funny, right?

  • Commercial != Proprietary (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:49PM (#11694636) Homepage

    Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, was quoted as saying something very unclear: "Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL...". The GNU General Public License (GPL) allows one to distribute copies of covered works for a fee. Many people have turned GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection), one noteworthy GPL-covered program, into a commercial work by distributing copies of it for a fee, some have also based for-hire consulting services on GCC. These consultants develop GCC as a business activity.

    Most of the time when people say "commercial [gnu.org]" in this context, they don't mean that. That word was just a poor choice which may stem from not fully understanding what software freedom entails. What they really meant to say was "proprietary [gnu.org]", which is something different. In this case, I don't know what that other meaning would be; a proprietary GPL would not be the GPL, it would be a perverse opposite of what the GPL stands for and accomplished long before the open source movement existed. Thus I'm left thinking Greenblatt's statement is at best unclear, non-sensical at worst.

  • "...and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't [get] rid of it."

    This kind of rhetoric could very well reduce the licence to a nuisance in the future. BSD advocates, please take note. Before you know it, software under the BSD licence could be viewed as 'encumbered' and will be avoided like the plague.

    IANAL, but I fail to see how this attitude could be considered constructive. Before you know it, there will be talk about just two licences. Perhaps even several licences, each being a slight

  • OSS is about choice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lakeland ( 218447 ) <lakeland@acm.org> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:55PM (#11694713) Homepage
    ... and you really can't stop people from making bad choices.

    Since editors are overused as an example, lets try CD burners. There are two that most people will know: k3b and nautilus. Yet a quick search on freshmeat will return literally dozens of CD burners. Why did those authors write a CD burner when excellent ones already existed? Maybe for experience, maybe due to a missing feature... it doesn't matter. The point is they can, so they will.

    Choosing an open-source licence is the same: There are a couple basic smart choices, but there is no way you're going to get everybody to agree to only use them. As a random example, one of the programs I use is only free if the kernel of the computer you run it on is open source, weird huh? It is the OSI's job to try and simplify things as much as possible so people can understand what's going on. Sure, they can discourage wacky choices, but they shouldn't be outlawing them from the OSS definition.

    PS: A google for licen{s,c}e returns the GPL as the number one hit.

  • BSD and the "can't get rid of it" thing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ulib ( 816651 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @08:52PM (#11695193) Homepage
    BSD and GPL have a *very* different spirit. The first one is strongly academic (making the source available with no strings attached, just requiring the user to give credits where they're due), the latter is strongly political (anti-proprietary, and openly communistic since it aims to abolish private property as far as software is concerned).

    I don't know about Sam Greenblatt, but the fact that you can't get rid of BSD makes most professional developers very happy.
    --
    Requiem for the FUD [slashdot.org]

  • More proof... (Score:3, Funny)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @09:16PM (#11695409) Homepage Journal
    ...that BSD is NOT dying: "You can't get rid of it" RE the license. Hahaha... laugh it's funny! ;P

  • Not a good idea. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GeorgeMcBay ( 106610 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @10:26PM (#11695936)
    I can imagine the outrage there would be here if Microsoft announced that software had to be one of three specific licenses to be "Windows certified".

    All this will do is alienate businesses that might have opened their source with their own licenses and cause them to either not open their source at all, or just ignore the OSI completely (thereby removing any power the organization might have had).

  • Wait this sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xgamer04 ( 248962 ) <xgamer04@NosPam.yahoo.com> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @10:34PM (#11695996)
    Three Licenses for the GNU-kings under the sky,
    Seven for the Corporate-lords in their halls of stone,
    Nine for Hacker Men doomed to die,
    One for Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond on their dark throne.
    In the Land of CVS where the Versions lie.
    One License to rule them all, One License to find them,
    One License to bring them all and in the darkness bind() them.
    In the Land of CVS where the Versions lie.

    Sorry, had to be done. :)

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