Has anyone written any papers that I can pass to our corporate legal department to educate them from a legal perspective any liabilities associated with open sourcing software we have developed?
-----Original Message----- From: Stan P. van de Burgt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 3:40 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Selecting an open source license At 11:18 AM -0700 9/7/03, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote: >Stan van de Burgt asked: >> My question: Is there a taxonomy of licenses, or better: a concise >> set of questions to answer, in order to select the right OSI approved > > license(s) for a project out of the 70+ present? > >[...] >You are somewhat exaggerating when you say there are "70+" licenses already. >We've got a ways to go to make that target. Not that this is a target -- in >fact, those of us who need to review and approve license submissions feel >that it will be a fate worse than death. :) You're right, I counted less than 50 (not counting older versions). >Many licenses are submitted for single projects or companies. These >licenses are often not worth copying and are listed on the OSI website only >because it is important to know that software so licensed is really OSI >Certified open source software. But don't use those licenses for your >software. Select one of the general licenses. I've listed the major ones >in this email. > >That narrows you down to six (6) licenses you can read and understand first. >Not that the others are bad licenses. They're just not worth considering if >this is your first go-round with open source licensing. >Again, start by thinking about your own open source business model, then see >if one of those six licenses will meet your needs. > >/Larry Rosen >General counsel, Open Source Initiative >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >(C) Copyright 2003 Lawrence Rosen >Licensed under the Open Software License version 2.0 Thanks, that's great: Then 3 Yes/No questions would suffice for these 6. Although it would be great to have the extended version too, as some of the single-project licenses could be a good fit too. Thanks for narrowing it down for me. This could be helpful too to state on top of the licenses page of the web site. Regards, - Stan -- Stan P. van de Burgt [EMAIL PROTECTED] (PGP 0x853296C5) DMO, P.O.box 1248, 3500 BE, Utrecht, the Netherlands -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3 -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
