The Register: Sun Makes Licensing Peace Offering to OpenOffice.org

[ Thanks to Jason Greenwood for this link. ]

"Sun yesterday unveiled licensing relaxations designed to placate critics and boost contributions to OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite project. Sun, no stranger to abuse from the open source community over its licensing terms and conditions, has come under fire because contributors to OpenOffice.org had to sign an agreement giving Sun rights to their work.

"But now Sun's playing friendly. The new Joint Copyright Agreement (JCA) and Public Documentation License (PDL) change this in two ways. The JCA covers source code and related material, and is an assignment rather than a licence, allowing developers to share copyright ownership with Sun when they contribute code. The developer keeps ownership, but all source code is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)..."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• CNET News: Sun Muddies StarOffice Plans for OS X(Aug 02, 2002)
• NewsFactor: OpenOffice Gets Its OS X Story Straight(Jul 30, 2002)
• LinuxWorld: A First Look at StarOffice 6.0(Jun 12, 2002)