Clash of the Open Standards

Rollie Hawk writes "Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Computer Associates (CA) may agree that some housework is needed with open source licensing, but they may not be able to reconcile their views on the best solution. CA has a couple of possible solutions in mind for its proposed Template License. This license will likely be based on either Sun's Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) its own Trusted Open Source License. OSI, which does not favor corporate-centered licensing, opposes such moves on a number of grounds. Specifically, they point out that CDDL is not GPL-compatible. While acknowledging the problems with license proliferation, OSI prefers a solution involving stricter criteria (including that approved licenses must me non-duplicative, clear and understandable, and reusable) and is proposing a "three-tier system in which licenses are classified as preferred, approved or deprecated." While there is no legal requirement for any open-source license to be approved by OSI, it is currently common practice for developers to get their license blessing from it."

Re:more than two?

[Antity-H]

from http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ :
Academic Free License
Adaptive Public License
Apache Software License
Apache License, 2.0
Apple Public Source License
Artistic license
Attribution Assurance Licenses
New BSD license
Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License 1.1
Common Development and Distribution License
Common Public License 1.0
CUA Office Public License Version 1.0
EU DataGrid Software License
Eclipse Public License
Educational Community License
Eiffel Forum License
Eiffel Forum License V2.0
Entessa Public License
Fair License
Frameworx License
GNU General Public License (GPL)
GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License (LGPL)
Lucent Public License (Plan9)
Lucent Public License Version 1.02
IBM Public License
Intel Open Source License
Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer
Jabber Open Source License
MIT license
MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License)
Motosoto License
Mozilla Public License 1.0 (MPL)
Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL)
NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3
Naumen Public License
Nethack General Public License
Nokia Open Source License
OCLC Research Public License 2.0
Open Group Test Suite License
Open Software License
PHP License
Python license (CNRI Python License)
Python Software Foundation License
Qt Public License (QPL)
RealNetworks Public Source License V1.0
Reciprocal Public License
Ricoh Source Code Public License
Sleepycat License
Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
Sun Public License
Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0
University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
Vovida Software License v. 1.0
W3C License
wxWindows Library License
X.Net License
Zope Public License
zlib/libpng license

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Re:Actual impact

[foobsr]

Maybe a little more complicated, given that the FSF lists [fsf.org] some 80+ licenses, documentation related ones not included.

CC.

Re:GPL-compatible

[eviltypeguy]

Technically, it's the GPL that's incompatible with the CDDL, not the other way around. This is because the GPL states that the other code can't have any additional requirements basically.

Just a technicality...

Re:The AJS318 licence

[Josh Triplett]

Your proposed license is not an Open Source or Free Software license at all:

Translation of messages and documentation in the English-language version to other languages is permitted. However, this permission-to-translate clause must be replaced in the translated version by a clause forbidding any further translation.

From the Debian Free Software Guidelines, as well as the Open Source Definition:

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

Your license does not permit specific kinds of modified works from being distributed under the same terms.

I can understand the issue you are trying to solve: you don't want translations that don't come from the original, most likely because that would result in compounding errors due to mistranslation or limited translation. However, this is just one possible way that someone could make your program worse; they could also introduce bugs, security issues, standards-violations/extensions, or just features you don't like. Attempting to prevent people from making the program worse will also prevent people from exercising the right to create derivative works.

A much better solution is to require that modified works are clearly labelled as modified, and not represented as the original. Licenses such as the GPL and the zlib license do exactly that. This way, people can still modify the program for any purpose, but they won't make you look bad in the process, only themselves.

Another minor issue with your license is the fact that you require people to provide an offer for source code that is valid in perpetuity, without providing the alternative of just providing source code at the same time as providing the binary. This means that if someone ever provided a version of your program on their website, they would have to keep a copy of the source for that version indefinitely. This gets even worse if they distributed several versions.

These are just a few symptoms of what happens when you attempt to write your own license rather than using a well-established Free Software / Open Source license.

Re:The AJS318 licence

[Kazriko]

IANAL, but the problem with this is that once you say something is "Public Domain" you no longer have any say whatsoever in it. Those conditions would not need to be followed by anyone at all. Public Domain is Public Domain. Anyone can use it for any purpose without consulting you nor following any of your instructions on its use. I believe that includes the disclaimer.