A
New Style In Open Source Licenses?
You
may have noticed a lot of talk recently about new versions of Open
Source licenses. For
example, the GPL is in the process of being revised, although it is
not generally used by commercial software developers since it
requires that software licensed under it be open sourced (and many
commercial developers want more protection for their IP).
Many
commercial software companies, although enthusiastic and supportive
of Open Source have invented custom versions of Open Source licenses
– so many (more than 60) that they are difficult to understand,
keep track of, or properly enforce.
With
that in mind, Computer Associates (CA) has come out in favor of a
single Open Source license, with templates that can be used to
create legal international versions (most Open Source licenses are
enforceable outside the U.S.). Local law firms, within the relevant
countries, would be used to create the national templates, to insure
that they are compliant to the local legal systems.
Both
OSDL and OSI (the major licensing board for Open Source licenses
other than the GPL) agree that fewer licenses would be much better,
but both are pretty sure that there will always be a need for
multiple licenses.
CA may base the license on Sun’s CDDL license (the one used for
OpenSolaris) or on CA’s OpenTrust license.
This
sounds like a good idea and we hope that CA is successful is
gathering support from other major Open Source vendors.
A
bigger question is how we’d migrate software from the existing 60+
Open Source licenses to a new, broadly accepted license.
I think I’ll save that problem for another day.
