Cutting back license proliferation [LWN.net]

February 23, 2005

This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier.

The number of open source licenses in use today would be a good example of "too much of a good thing." Taken individually, each open source license represents the freedom to use, modify and redistribute code. However, many of the licenses are incompatible, and present a hurdle for open source projects that may want to incorporate code from other projects.

At LinuxWorld last week the Open Source Initiative (OSI) board made it known that they are looking at ways to reduce the number of open source licenses in use. We invited Russ Nelson, president of OSI to respond to questions about reducing the number of open source licenses in use.

LWN: What's so bad about license proliferation?

Two problems:

A company reasonably should take a good look at the license before they modify a piece of open source software, even for internal use. "A good look" means a legal analysis. Every new open source license makes it that much more expensive. Some companies want to do this even if they only *use* open source software (but no open source license restricts use in any way).
What happens when you want to combine software from two different packages, but they're licensed under software with conflicting terms?

LWN: Realistically, what can be done about the problem? How can OSI "trim" the number of licenses, or influence companies and developers that use one-off licenses or less popular licenses that are incompatible with the "main" open source licenses such as the GPL or BSD license?

Say "no" more often. But it's not enough for us to say "no". We have to have community support for saying "no", so that the community won't use software that isn't OSI Certified.

LWN: OSI has approved quite a few licenses - how many of those licenses are one-offs or used by a handful of projects?

The vast majority. Before we can address license proliferation, we need to understand the problem better. How many companies think they need to study a license before they can use open source? How many before they make internal modifications? How many before they publish modifications? We need to understand how many licenses are actually being used, and how widely. Lots of study needed before we take action.

LWN: Is there any consideration being given to changing the Open Source Definition - for example, to disallow licenses that are specifically tailored not to be compatible with the GPL?

We would have to discern intent to do that. But yes, we've changed the OSD in the past; we may do it again.

LWN: It's been well-publicized that version 3 of the GPL is in the works. (Well, has been for some time, but much noise has been made about it being ready this year.) What needs to be in version 3?

Depends on what your goal is. If you went into a code tree to refactor it, there's always changes you would make. If you want to add features, you would make different changes. I expect that some community members would like the GPL to be a contract rather than a copyright license. I expect that others would like to see copyright provisions address "public performance"; that is, web services.

LWN: In one story, Sam Greenblatt was quoted as saying "there should be three licenses: the GPL, a commercial version of the GPL and...the BSD." What would a "commercial version of the GPL" look like?

CDDL. Or more properly, the MPL, since it already has traction in the community (clearly, since Sun wrote the CDDL based on the MPL). A lot of licenses are derived from the MPL. If we can figure out why they derived the MPL rather than using it, we can fix the problem in the MPL that caused them to do that.

LWN: Thanks, Russ.

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Cutting back license proliferation

Posted Feb 24, 2005 8:03 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Obviously, it has been a very good strategy for the OSI to accept any new license, as long as it's OSD compliant. This is how most of the corporate world first accepts Open Source. Getting their own license seems to be important for them, maybe they feel that they are still in control or something. Also, as Russ himself points out, it is important that everybody accepts OSI to be the authority on what is Open Source and what is not. Therefore the could not have neglected some licenses just because "This looks good, but we're not in the mood for new licenses today".

That being said, me too would like to have fewer licenses, and I'm not even a corporation. Maybe a good start would be to pick out a few (GPL, BSD, MIT/X, MPL, IBM and maybe some other patent-addressing license) into a recommended or first-class category, and put all the rest into an other or second-class category. That way it would be clear that some licenses are preferred (as in: This software is "First class OSI certified Open Source".) while some are simply accepted.

Anything that complies with the OSD should then be accepted into the second category. The first-class category would be defined as reserved for the most popular ones, and maybe exceptionally some license could get into the first category if it has important features that other licenses don't have (a really clever patent clause or some way of dealing with web-services as one example). Or such new and not yet popular licenses might be showcased in a "considered for first-class" category, or they could be marked as being on trial period or something, and then eventually popularity alone would be the deciding factor.

This is a great idea

Posted Feb 24, 2005 13:34 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

Better yet if OSI makes a chart of the interactions of the "first class" licenses, compatibility issues between them, and maybe a license-o-tron like Creative Commons has...

Cutting back license proliferation

Posted Feb 25, 2005 11:31 UTC (Fri) by mbp (guest, #2737) [Link]

I very much hope Russ can do something about the problem of licence proliferation, and I wish him all the best.

That said, OSI does not have any divine right to define what is or is not acceptable. Like everyone else in the community, they need to earn respect by doing good work. In other words, they need to present cogent arguments and lead opinion (along the lines of EFF), rather than pretend to speak for everyone, as they have perhaps done in the past.

I know some large companies have made exactly that 'first class' distinction already around GPL, LGPL and MIT. One great thing for OSI to do (after appropriate consideration) would be an argument explaining why this, or something like it, is a good approach.

Avoid the MPL

Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:14 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

In this great piece http://perens.com/Articles/OSD.html
Bruce Perens OSI founder wrote that:
--
Many companies have adopted a variation of the MPL for their own programs. This is unfortunate, becuase the NPL was designed for the specific business situation that Netscape was in at the time it was written, and is not necessarily appropriate for others to use. It should remain the license of Netscape and Mozilla, and others should use the GPL or the or X licenses.
--

Despite Russ comments, it still apply today.

The MPL is GPL incompatible (mozilla was later dual-licensed with the GPL for that reason). I don't know if the MPL was 'specifically tailored not to be compatible with the GPL' but who care ? The MPL give you the opportunuity to pick a OSI-approved license yet GPL incompatible, so who would need to make a 'specifically tailored not to be compatible with the GPL' ?