Open Source License Comparison

rbb writes "Bryce Wilcox-O'Hearn, aka Zooko, has put together a simple chart that in just a few lines displays the characteristics of each of the most popular Open Source licenses. The table, which is currently in version 0.8.3, makes it easy to see in a glance how the licenses compare to one another." Easily digestible information - good for PHB ^[?] s.

You forgot one....

Micro$ofts Shared source. HA!HA!

Does this seem wrong to anyone else?

From the link: "...it is not clear that it is even possible to voluntarily place your software into the public domain under United States law. There is a common myth that one can do so simply by creating a work and writing "This software/work/text is hereby placed in the public domain.", but that does not do, legally, what it is commonly believed to do. For example, it might later be possible for you to assert your ownership over the code and forbid others to use it. "

So current copyright law, which is supposed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, all for the benefit of the public, now actually makes it difficult for a creator to voluntarily release his work to that public?

No sense. None at all.

Hey!

This license comparison story first appeared on Newsforge [newsforge.com], and I wrote the paragraph that was posted at the top of this discussion. Just trying to wrest some credit where credit is due.

We now return you regularly.

Tina Gasperson

Free as in **?

OK, every once in a while I see a post that says something like "Free as in beer", but not free as in ??. Anyway, since the topic is licenses could someone please clarify the free as in X statements. Its been something I have not understood for a while. One of the few Slashdot things I've been out of the loop on.. hehe.. Thanks in advance.

JOhn

In other news...

Bill Gates prepared a chart of how much money his closed-source license has made him, N*Sync prepared a chart of how much money their CD sales have earned, and an unnamed open-source programmer made a sign that says "will prepare charts for food."

Why mix copyright with patents?

I personally see MPL as non-free, because it disriminate against corporations with software-patents.
(If a corporation uses your code, add something
to it, which infridges their patent, and they have lost).

Though I see software-patents, ecspeccily as used in the US as an bad thing, the same holds in my eyes for the producers of wapons or riffles, or those who sell or buy them. And if an licence would discriminate against those, I think noone would call the licence free.

quick reference

I don't think a quick reference is practical for something that is not only very complicated, but also to some extent a matter of personal preference.

For example, this quick reference puts into doubt whether "the community" (which community?!) likes to accept code under the GPL, and indicates that there is no problem accepting code under a BSD license.

IMO, it should be the other way around. GPL code is safe from an unscrupulous vendor doing what microsoft did to kerberos (use it, don't give anything back, and mess up interoperability for the people who originally wrote the code). The BSD license doesn't have such a protection, so I consider it unsafe, aka not popularly accepted.

You don't have to agree. That's the point: This is not something that can be summarized effectively in such a tiny little chart.

Quote from the article ...

Apparently the only way to be safe against the accusation of having given "legal advice" is to write with such ambiguity and obfuscation that nobody can learn anything from what you've written

Well from my experience the more complicated it looks, the more like legal advice it becomes!

And judging from the wars on this site, most of us write like this anyway :P

Yet another break down of licenses...

is here. [clarkevans.com] I wrote it about 3 years ago, right about when ESR formed OSI. Best, Clark

Please help make it better -- don't just flame.

Hi folks. The License Quick Ref is definitely a work in progress. I am no lawyer and there are a lot of question marks and probably a lot of inaccuracies or other bugs.

Please e-mail <[e-mail]> with suggestions for improvement. Thanks!

If you send me flames, I may elect to post them to my web log. :-)

http://zooko.com/ [zooko.com].

Regards,

Zooko

Falls between two stools

Kudos to Zooko for producing this, but I have to point out that if you didn't already know this stuff, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here because there's not enough basic introduction, and if you did already know it, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here, because there's not enough detail.

And what on earth is the point in posting your opinion on legal issues, then disclaiming that opinion as being worthless? Again, no disrespect to Zooko, but his opinion isn't worth any more than mine or yours.

Let's keep pressing for IAAL advice, or better yet, get some of these licenses tested in court, proactively and preemptively if necessary. I'd happily help fund a FSF case to have a declaratory decision made on the validity and limitations of the GPL.

Apache style license?

How does an Apache-style license fit into this? Same as X11/BSD?

Different Questions

I read your explaination of why the author chose questions that would show GPL as better. You've probably heard these arguments before but I thought I'd provide a personal example of why I think there might be better questions.

I'm a video game programmer. I think video game programmers are generally at the opposite extreme in terms of whether open source code is useful for game code development or not. Meaning for example it's clearly worked for OSes and for Web servers but it gets arguably gets less useful for apps and maybe even more for games. (I could explain this but I'm trying to keep this short)

Anyway, the point is, if you make the assumption that basically game companies will probably never GPL their game code for an inproduction game (vs tool code) then GPL code is NOT generally useful to commerical game programmers. So, in my personal example, if I wrote some cool 3D engine or quaterion code or collision code or physics engine and I GPLed it, most likely, none of my friends in the industry who are also commerical game developers could use my code to help their jobs, make their lives easier etc. If I BSDed it they can. AND most likely they can also contribute (most companies are not completely stupid) to BSD style but not to GPL.

So, although the author suggested the question "Can redistribute proprietary version" where *proprietary* is arguably the word GPL advocates see as bad, I would suggest one which I think they might find more palettable. "Is useful to ALL my programming friends" vs "Is useful only to friends that can GPL their code" or maybe even simpler, "can be used by ALL programmers" vs GPL which is "can only be used by programmers that can GPL their code". Since sharing code seems to be a major reason to open source code and since in my person situation, BSDing allows me to share with more people than GPL. I choose BSD style.

It's in this sense of wanting to help people, most of whom are not in a position to use GPL that I find BSD style more useful because it helps MORE people.

To get off that issue and directly into "anti" GPL stuff. I see GPL as kind of like volunteering to help the poor only if they promise to help you back where as BSD is just like real volunteering. You don't expect anything back except karma and good will. But, I also see that by real world example, people have contributed just fine to BSD style licensed projects (FreeBSD, Apache) so the arguement that you need to GPL your code to make sure you get other peoples contributions seems not really to hold up where as the arguement that GPLed code is useful to less people than FreeBSD code is arguably provable.

good for PHB?

You know, I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for over 15 years and I can tell you the Player's Hand Book is confusing enough will all it's charts and tables. Added this chart will just frustrate DMs like myself when the players say "Look, that Dragon falls under the GNU GPL so it must share it's source of wealth!!"

Open Source as a Business Strategy

Brian Behlendorf has a nice chapter [oreilly.com] in "Open Sources" [oreilly.com] at the O'Reilly site that summarizes each of the various licenses. He describes various business models and suggests what licenses are most appropriate for each. I especially liked the following comment:

• The open-source approach is not a magic bullet for every type of software development project. Not only do the conditions have to be right for conducting such a project, but there is a tremendous amount of real work that has to go into launching a successful project that has a life of its own. In many ways you, as the advocate for a new project, have to act a little like Dr. Frankenstein, mixing chemicals here, applying voltage there, to bring your monster to life.

The Apache Public License

Maybe it would be good to add the APL which I think is close to a BSD style license.
BTW, to have an idea about what APL developpers think about GPL (LPGL in fact) just have look here [covalent.net] it's an excerpt from a discussion where the integration of GNU Regexp was seriouly discussed in cocoon-dev mailing list.

This is a bit silly

That table mixes the subjective and objective deftly, and is as of as much value as the following beer (not free) comparison:

CONTAINS HOPS CONTAINS WATER TASTES GREAT
Bud______Y________________Y____________N
Coors____Y________________Y____________N1
Bass_____?2_______________Y____________Y

1) Some people in the community think Coors tastes great, but considering this is subjective bullshit it doesn't matter.
2) Bass is an 'ale' not a 'lager' like Bud and Coors, and I don't know enough about beer to know if 'ale' contains 'hops.' I know there are 'bugs' in this list (in other words I have little clue as to what I'm talking about and I hope people who do have a clue fill in the blanks for me) but my stupid little occasionally accurate matrix of text made it on /. wahoo!

I have a feeling showing that table to your PHB might give your PHB more clue about YOU than open source code and the associated licenses that a real PHB couldn't care less about. Remember to post a "I got laid off, now what?" 'ask slashdot' request in hope you'll get more brilliant advice.

Which licenses scare MS? The Artistic License?

Recently I was thinking of converting over all my Artistic License software to GPL because I thought that only the GPL really scared Microsoft enough to make sure that they wouldn't "embrace and extend" my software. But the recently reported MS license that described AL as one of the "potentially viral licenses" made me think that the AL is sufficient protection.

What we really need is an answer to the question: "Which licenses scare MS?" If they don't stop at least MS from appropriating the software, then what use is such an OS license?

GPL code not liked by the community?

He seems to be unsure whether "the community" likes to accept code under the GPL. If he means the business community, maybe I can understand his uncertainty, but I thought he meant the hacker community.

He actually stated "a hypothetical open source/free software hacker may prefer to create source code under the GPL, but may prefer to use source code licensed to her under a license that permits her to combine the licensed source code with proprietary source code." Are we that hypocritical?

Is it appropriate?

Is it appropriate to select a copyright version based upon whether the community accepts it more readily, or whether the specific copyright is more appropriate for the type software...

The Condensed Version...

Only the GPL truly protects the interests of developers and users. The others are attempts to compromise with an enemy which accepts no compromise...

...kind of like all those people who were protesting nuclear weapons in the U.S. while the U.S.S.R. was unashamedly preparing to destroy the West.

Okay then...let me ask you a question

You seem to have a strong opinion in favor of the GPL and, from what I can determine, it looks like a fantastic concept that is applicable to more than just computer code. However, I am somewhat inexperienced with open licenses and have a few questions as I consider publishing software that I am currently developing. Short story is as follows, the program I'm working on is being coded in Python (latest GPL OK version). It is designed for accessing damage and/or fatigue life for aging commercial aircraft. The math engine is developed by myself and I'd like to make it available to other experts in the field so that it can grow. I would also like input from experienced programmers since I am self taught (this is in fact my first Python program). On the other hand, I need to keep that math model under tight control. I am concerned that someone who is a good programmer but not experienced in aircraft fatigue my modify the math engine in such a way as to make it unsafe for use. Can the GPL protect from this scenario?

Free, as in air

These licenses are for sissies. Real men either release their work under public domain or charge for binaries.

I have a couple of projects I'm thinking of making available to the public, and the only reason I see to release under, say, the GPL is that I feel deeply indebted to the FSF and others who contributed to free software. Other than that, these licenses are too restrictive, except maybe for BSD and X licenses. They may bring a feeling of assurance to developers, but users do suffer.

Wait for the GPL vs BSD flame fest...

I'll give it an hour. Max. USian's will all be in work soon...

I like the idea behind the chart though. Choosing a license is a personal thing, and after all, it's the developer's right to do what (s)he will with their own code isn't it? A simple chart like this should help people make a more informed choice.

It would be nice if it included a few more licenses though; there are what? Maybe 30 or more? Anyone have a list to send this guy?

Open Source Licenses are so confusing...

With all these different Open Source licenses and legalese involved, it is so difficult to determine an appropriate license for http://freshmeat.net/ai/ [freshmeat.net] and for http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/ [sourceforge.net] that a perhaps dangerously naive Public Domain license has remained in place by default -- even as the ominous specter rears its head of a potential military take-over of the Open Source artificial intelligence project, as evidenced by these recent logs of access by military domains to the www.scn.org/~mentifex/ AI Home Page: [scn.org]

07/Aug/2001:07:22:58 - pentagon.mil - /~mentifex/jsaimind.html
07/Aug/2001:14:44:12 - af.mil - /~mentifex/aisource.html
07/Aug/2001:14:44:16 - af.mil - /~mentifex/jsaimind.html
07/Aug/2001:14:48:19 - af.mil - /~mentifex/index.html
08/Aug/2001:11:21:48 - army.mil - /~mentifex/
08/Aug/2001:11:22:02 - army.mil - /~mentifex/aisource.html
08/Aug/2001:22:18:15 - nosc.mil - /~mentifex/aisource.html

interactive version

Check this out:

Peter Lowe has written an interactive version of the License Quick Ref which shows you the table in a way that reflects your own biases. Ha!

http://yoyo.org/~pgl/lqr/ [yoyo.org]

Regards,

Zooko

P.S. Despite my fears of massive slashdot flamage, there has actually been pretty much no flames, except for one from a certain unnamed Linux world journalist. Maybe the community is growing up! After all, Linux itself is 10 years old, so the first generation of Linux hackers are now in their late 20's at least.

Re: So what license is THIS released under?

Duh. Scroll down or something.

Based on "license_quick_ref.html", originally written by Zooko in 2001 and posted to "http://zooko.com/license_quick_ref.html".

written in 2001 by Zooko; You may copy and use this document in unmodified form. Alternatively, you may copy and use this document in modified form, provided that you remove this line (that begins: 'written in 2001 by Zooko...') and retain the line above (that begins: 'Based on "license_quick_ref.html"...').

Re:Good for PHBs?

Guess I'm not elitist enough for this site.

OK, calling them PHBs was a little mean, but the fact is that most managemant types won't have put in the free-time research-cum-hobbyist-wnderings that most of the /. crowd have. Therefore, quick executive summaries are actually very useful.

Re:Hmmm

Try reading the whole document

Re:Hmmm

But surely only Microsoft can authorise the use of their Shared Source license, meaning you can't just tag it to your latest 'leet project.

Probably the same reason that the Sun Community license is missing, and the dreaded MS EULA!