InfoWorld: Pentaho opens up further (Exhibit B to real MPL)

[Rick Moen]

Matt Asay has good news in his InfoWorld blog
(http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/01/pentaho_opens_u.html): 
   	
  January 26, 2007

  Pentaho opens up further
  Filed under: Open Source

  I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but Pentaho has gone 100% open
  source. [link]

Matt's link is to http://www.pentaho.com/subscriptions/ :

  The Pentaho BI Suite Subscription extends Pentaho's best-in-class open
  source BI capabilities with professional technical support, Management
  Services features, and intellectual property indemnification. A Pentaho
  BI Suite Subscription allows you to deploy the world's most popular open
  source BI suite in production with confidence, security, and far lower
  total cost of ownership compared to proprietary alternatives. [...]

http://www.pentaho.org/download/ proclaims the new licensing:

  A complete business intelligence platform that includes reporting,
  analysis (OLAP), dashboards, data mining and data integration (ETL). Use
  it as a full suite or as individual components that are accessible via
  web services. Ranked #1 in open source BI. Released under the Mozilla
  Public License version 1.1 [link to http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.txt]

The linked SourceForge project pages 
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/pentaho/) indeed say "License: Mozilla
Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)".  (I've recently been careful to... well...
trust but verify, whenever claims of MPL 1.1 licensing for Web apps are
concerned.)


What _was_ the nature of that change?  http://swik.net/Mondrian?page=2 
describes it:
   
  ==============================================================
  Pentaho Changes Platform License to Mozilla Public License, Version 1.1
  ==============================================================

  As of our 1.1.5 Milestone release of the Pentaho BI Suite, we have
  officially switched our licensing from the Pentaho Public License to the
  Mozilla Public License, version 1.1. The decision to change the
  licensing was driven by input from the development community along with
  our strong belief in being true open source contributors.

(Downloading Pentaho BI v. 1.2's tarball and checking source verifies this.)

But what _was_ Pentaho Public License?  It was -- you got it -- yet another 
MPL 1.1 + "Exhibit B" badgeware licence, still viewable at 
http://www.pentaho.org/license/ :

  [...] in addition to any other notice obligations required under the
  PPL, all copies of the Covered Code in Executable and Source Code form
  distributed must, as a form of attribution of the original author,
  include on each user interface screen the copyright notices in the same
  form as contained in the latest version of the Covered Code distributed
  by Pentaho Corporation at the time of distribution of such copy. In
  addition, any and all hyperlinks embedded in such copyright notices must
  be maintained in any distribution of the Covered Code.


So, "going 100% open source" means moving _away_ from "Exhibit B"
badgeware.  OK, cool.  I'm certainly not criticising, just noting
what Matt's saying in his most recent articles, which I found
refreshing.

-- 
"Is it not the beauty of an asynchronous form of discussion that one can go and 
make cups of tea, floss the cat, fluff the geraniums, open the kitchen window 
and scream out it with operatic force, volume, and decorum, and then return to 
the vexed glowing letters calmer of mind and soul?" -- The Cube, forum3000.org