Academic Vs. Reciprocal Open Source Licensing

An anonymous reader writes "Open source licenses provide the legal foundation for propagation of open source code. This article explores the two most popular forms of open source licenses -- the academic license and the reciprocal license -- and describes the obligations of licensees that accept the terms of each."

Re:Slashdot got slashdoted!

[squidinkcalligraphy]

<Nelson>Ha ha!</Nelson>

A simpler analogy:

[squidinkcalligraphy]

free speech vs free beer.

Re:A simpler analogy:

[Brandybuck]

Except I get both free "speech" and free "beer" with BOTH types of licenses. And before you lecture me on the finer points of Stallmanist philosophy, I also get morality AND pragmatism with both types of licenses as well.

4th post!

[The Hobo]

almost 12 hours after the story was posted...

Could this be?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Could this possibly be the most boring post ever?

I mean, it's been close to an hour now, and only five posts. Yeah, I know we are having some technical problems, but really, this is not the slashdot I know and love. So the only logical explanation is, that this really is the Most. Boring. Post. Ever.

not boring

[radu124]

maybe if the post used hard words like GPL vs BSD it would have been more successful.

Anyway, if I wanted to make a gift to mankind, I would use BSD, if I wanted to make a gift to the opensource community I would use GPL, it's as simple as that.

Re:not boring

[radu124]

this should at least raise an eyebrow

> Critics of the GPL claim that the license is unconstitutional.
> Others take offense at the GPL's reciprocity. And one
> plaintiff has even sued the Free Software Foundation, claiming
> that the GPL attempts to fix software prices at $0, thus denying
> the plaintiff a living as a software developer.

[quote from tfa]

Re:not boring

[Nugget]

Nice thought, but perhaps you're being overly broad with the phrase "opensource community." Code you've released under the GPL is not usable by the Mozilla people, the Apache people, any of the BSD projects, PostgreSQL and any number of other great and thriving open source projects which do not use the GPL. Heck, you've pretty much locked out even projects like MySQL and Asterisk who use the GPL alongside commercial licensing (and consequently cannot import pure GPL code)

Re:not boring

[EzInKy]

Nice thought, but perhaps you're being overly broad with the phrase "opensource community."


Some people consider end users to be part of the "opensource community" too so choose the GPL to ensure that they will never be charged simply for running their software.

Legal advice from Linus:

[l2718]

And at least according to Linus Torvalds, the creator and chief architect of Linux, code linked against GPL code -- say, against libavl, the GNU library for balanced binary trees -- isn't subject to reciprocity, either.

While I respet Linus's views, I don't think he's licensed to give legal opinion on copyright law in any jurdisdiction. Of course since he's the copyright holder for much of the Linux kernel, he has the right to interpret the GPL as it applies to Linux. However, this does not mean that G

Nothing to see here

[swelke]

This is just about the requirement that derivative works be under the same license. All the author is saying is that reciprocal licenses (GPL, etc.) have this requirement, and academic licenses (BSD etc.) don't. Considering the fact that all other license requirements (commercial use, for example) are lumped in together, I'd say the author is just making a story out of nothing.

As a side comment, that sharealike requirement (as the Creative Commons folks refer to it) seems to be the most interesting issue

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"academic license" a misnomer

[penguin-collective]

The term "academic license" is usually taken to refer either to a lower priced commercial license for academic institutions, or a license of some proprietary piece of software that permits inspection and/or modification only for academic (mostly the same as non-commercial) purposes.

Using the term to refer collectively to MIT/BSD-style licenses is confusing and misleading; there is nothing intrinsically "academic" about those licenses.

Thank you

[dawidcha]

I can't help thinking that the discussion on this post has been like so much playground sniggering.

"Level: Introductory"

This is what it says at the top of the article so for so many self-rated sophisticates of the open source world. I have some news. In much of the commercial world there is still a lot of misunderderstanding about what the benefits and potential risks are of adopting open source solutions. This article provides a fine overview into what it is all about and how to make sense of the hug