Open-source board eyes fewer licenses

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That illustrates the difference between open source and free source

GPL and LGPL attempt to be free source, meaning you are free to do whatever you want with the code so long as you are willing to redistribute the source code along with any binaries, and you may even add to the code so long as you are the one changing it or you have permission from the copyright holder of those additions. And BSD of course eliminates any source code redistribution requirements, but keeps the copyright notification requirements.

Solaris is merely open source, because even though the source code is open, you are not free to use that code with other open source code, even if the copyright holders of that other code gives you permission, because Sun does not give you permission to do that.

So obviously the FSF would not accept Sun's Solaris, but we're not talking about FSF. However by stating that open source licences should be only three licences (GPL, GPL-commercial, and BSD), the OSI is aligning themselves with the FSF's stance that all open source should be free source. But that leaves Sun out in the cold, doesn't it?

Personally, I think the OSI should stand for two different types of open source licencing: free open source and non-free open source (go ahead and give the latter a friendlier name if it makes you feel better). The GPL's and BSD's would be in the free source categories and the CDDL would be in the non-free category (MS's shared source may qualify too, but that would be iffy because it's not 100% of the code). Doing that would give the licences the proper labels, and would not shun those who choose not to release their code as completely free but still want to share their code.

Posted by: Michael Kelly   Posted on: 02/16/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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