posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:50
There are several Open Source Software licenses, but only a few of them are widely used. These tend to be compatible, so the software can be combined to produce a larger work. David A. Wheeler (2007) produced a one page slide which shows the possible combinations. It also has references on where to find more information
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:38
The general public license of Affero can be found in its website.
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:37
n a single page, you have all the links for GNU licenses. It starts with common resources, then GNUGPL (GNU General Public License), the Affero license, GPL3 (and 1 and 2), a list of Free Software Licenses and a definition of Copyleft. A complete resource from the source (2009).
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:36
Open Bar is a not-for-profit organization which developed information about the legal rights and responsibilities of software developers, legal professionals and users of open source/free software; and educating them and the general public about the issues, rights and responsibilities associated with the development, use and distribution of open source/free software. Open Bar's website has a number of easy to read papers like “
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:35
This is one of the findings of a report from The 451 Group with the catchy name “Open Source is not a business model: how vendors generate revenue from OSS” (2008). The conclusion of the 71 page report is: “Open Source is not a business model. It is a development and distribution model that it is enabled by a licensing tactic.
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:34
The Scope of Open Source Licensing is a paper from Josh Lerner (Harvard University) and Jean Tirole (MIT) published in 2003 and largely quoted worldwide. It explores decisions that a licensor takes on how restrictive is the license to employ and presents an empirical analysis of different types of Open Source licenses.
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:33
Making Sense of Open Source Licenses is a comprehensive slide presentation from Aaron Farr at the Apache Conference Europe (2008). It presents the concept that the license determines the rules the community lives by and captures its philosophy. Different licenses create different communities.
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:32
Bruce Perens (the creator of the Open Source Definition and the criterion for Open Source software licensing) argues in this article (2009) that you don't need 73 licenses, three or four is enough.
There is a very interesting discussion about the article in Slashdot
posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 17:31
