Open Source Licenses

[David Johnson]

On Tuesday 07 November 2000 11:21 am, Brendan de Bruijn wrote:
> All,
> I am writing on behalf of a European telecomms research project I am
> working on; we are looking at the use of Open Source software in a major
> telco's environment. 

Is this in inquiry to software that you will be using,  or software that you 
will be creating? For the first, any license is pretty much as good as the 
next. For the second, you have one major choice: copyleft or unrestricted.

Copyleft ensures that all copies and derivatives of the software will remain 
open source. Unrestricted means that you can do just about anything with the 
software, including distributing a binary-only derivative. Copyleft is 
typified by the GPL and LGPL, and unrestricted by the BSD and MIT licenses. 
And there are licenses that fall in between, such as the QPL and Artistic.

It's what you want to do with your own software. Copyleft is good when you 
have commercial competition and unrestricted is good when you want the 
software to be widely used. And there are philosophical factions that lean 
one way or the other.

> If anyone has the time, I would be very grateful if you could answer some
> of my queries. I am slightly confused about the various types of licenses
> that are accredited by OSI, especially as the GNU people explicitly
> discredit some of these licenses on their website

The only OSI license that is not declared free by GNU is the Artistic 
License, but it is a special case. It's not necessarily unfree, but it is too 
vague to GNU to make a determination. All other OSI licenses are also 
declared Free by GNU, the last time I checked. As for other discreditings on 
other licenses, you need to remember that GNU wants to promote its own 
licenses. 

> especially regarding liablility in the event of things 'breaking'. Is the
> common 'Warranty' displayed at the end of a license enough to cover this?

First, there is nothing preventing you from offering your own warranty. For 
*commercial* software, I would highly recommend this. Highly. Please. But 
keep the your additional warranty disclaimer separate from the license, so 
that you don't discourage contributors to your code, who have no desire to be 
bound by your promises.

If you don't want a warranty, talk to a lawyer. 

-- 
David Johnson
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