[License-discuss] Draft of new OSI licenses landing page; please review.

Mike Milinkovich mike.milinkovich at eclipse.org
Wed Apr 4 19:49:18 UTC 2012


Karl,

So this is basically re-opening up the whole can of worms that the license
proliferation committee struggled with some years back that led them to
create the category "License that are popular and widely used or with strong
communities". Notably missing from your list are the "weak copyleft"
licenses that are backed by large communities such as Mozilla and Eclipse. 

I am certainly not happy with the idea that the only license of that
category which would be implicitly recommended by the OSI is the LGPL. The
LGPL is not a desirable license for many (primarily commercial) adopters of
open source, and in fact neither the Eclipse or Apache communities will
allow it for dependencies.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org [mailto:license-discuss-
> bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of John Cowan
> Sent: April-04-12 3:13 PM
> To: Karl Fogel; license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Draft of new OSI licenses landing page;
please
> review.
> 
> Karl Fogel scripsit:
> 
> > So I've drafted this page:
> >
> >   http://opensource.org/licenses-draft
> 
> I think this is an excellent idea and a good first cut.
> 
> I think the list of top licenses is the correct list.  However, I
> would reorder it to GPL, Apache, BSD, MIT, LGPL rather than the current
> historical order.  Apache is a more modern and comprehensive permissive
> license than BSD or MIT, even if it's not as widely used yet due to the
> immense number of older projects.  Also, add a note about LGPL 2.1 still
> being in widespread use.
> 
> I note that the list claims to be complete, but omits the superseded and
> retired licenses.  I'd put those two categories, plus the non-reusable
> licenses, into a third list at the bottom labeled "Licenses not
> recommended for further use."
> 
> --
> John Cowan     http://ccil.org/~cowan    cowan at ccil.org
> Monday we watch-a Firefly's house, but he no come out.  He wasn't home.
> Tuesday we go to the ball game, but he fool us.  He no show up.  Wednesday
> he
> go to the ball game, and we fool him.  We no show up.  Thursday was a
> double-header.  Nobody show up.  Friday it rained all day.  There was no
ball
> game, so we stayed home and we listened to it on-a the radio.  --Chicolini
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