“The Open Source bandwagon is growing – many companies have
jumped aboard, while many others have continued to license software
as they always have. Sun Microsystems has taken the inevitable
third road: they are trying to get the benefits of free software,
without any of the “disadvantages.” Bluntly: they are trying to get
free labor without giving up control of their software. They’ve
even given this development model an ironic name – “Community
Source Licensing.”
“When you boil it all down, only a couple of the rationales Sun
gives are convincing:
- They want to reap the financial rewards from per-copy licensing
of the software, while also getting free labor from us. - They are overly paranoid about Java fragmentation, and don’t
think trademarks and/or the Perl route will be enough to avoid
it.”
“Even if Sun doesn’t catch on, it’s important to send a clear
message to other companies that “Community Source Licensing” is no
substitute for the real thing.”