eWeek: Open Season on Open-Source Licenses | Linux Today

eWeek: Open Season on Open-Source Licenses

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Apr 27, 2005

[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood
for this link. ]

“During the past few weeks, the hottest issue for hand-wringing
among pundits on, and would-be participants in, the open-source
community has been open-source license proliferation. Computer
Associates International has been making statements about the need
for a new, modular open-source license, and the Open Source
Initiative–the organization that blesses licenses as open
source—is talking about tightening its requirements with an
eye toward reducing the number of licenses certified.

“The concern is that burgeoning masses of conflicting
open-source licenses are threatening to hinder the development of
free software. Actually, the open-source licensing landscape is
less complicated than it may seem. While the OSI has so far
certified some 50 licenses, most open code is distributed under
few—led by the GPL (General Public License), the license
under which the Linux kernel is distributed…”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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