Open-source loose license

Open-source loose license
GuideWhy does a restricted license like gnu gpl become increasingly undesirable. "If you use any open-source software, the rest of your software must also be open-source ." This is what Mr. Balmer, former CEO of Microsoft, said in 2001. Even if he did not say this, it still caused the FUD of free software (fear, uncertainty and doubt ), probably this is his intention.

These fuds for open-source software are mainly related to open-source licenses. There are now many different licenses, some of which are more restrictive than others (also known as "more protective "). Restrictive licenses such as the GNU General Public License (GPL) use the copyleft concept. Copyleft gives people the right to freely publish software copies and modify versions, as long as derivative work retains the same power. Open-source projects such as bash and GIMP use GPL (v3 ). There is also an AGPL (Affero GPL) license that provides copyleft license for software on the network (such as web service.

This means that if you use the licensed code and then add your own proprietary code, then in some cases, the entire code, this type of restricted open-source license applies to your code, and Ballmer says this type of license.

But the loose license is different. For example, as long as the copyright statement and license statement are retained and do not require the developer to take responsibility, the MIT license allows anyone to use open source code, including modification and sale. Another popular loose open source license is Apache license 2.0, which also contains the terms related to the contributor's provision of patent authorization to users. The MIT licenses include JQuery,. NET Core, and Rails. Software with Apache license 2.0 includes Android, Apache, and Swift.

The two license types ultimately aim to make the software more useful. Restrictive licenses promote the open-source concept of participation and sharing, so that everyone can maximize the benefits of the software. Loose licenses allow people to use software at will to ensure that people get the most benefit from the software, even if it means they can use code, modify it, sell it for themselves, or even with proprietary software, without any return.

According to data from the black duck software, the open source license management company, the most used open source license last year was a restricted license GPL of 2.0, with a share of about 25%. The MIT and Apache 2.0 loose licenses followed by 18% and 16% respectively, followed by GPL 3.0, with a share of about 10%. In this case, restricted licenses account for 35%, and loose licenses account for 34%, almost flat.

However, the current data does not reveal the development trend. According to data from the black duck software, the share of the MIT license increased by 2009 in the six years from 2015 to 15.7%, and the share of Apache increased by 12.4%. During this period, the shares of GPL v2 and v3 were surprisingly reduced by 21.4%. In other words, during this period, a large number of software has been transferred from restricted licenses to loose licenses.

This trend continues. According to the latest data from the black duck software, MIT's current share is 26%, GPL v2 is 21%, Apache 2 is 16%, and GPL v3 is 9%. That is, 30% of restricted licenses and 42% of loose licenses-a significant change has occurred compared to 35% of restricted licenses in the previous year and 34% of loose licenses. Research into the use of licenses on GitHub confirms this change. It shows that MIT has become the most popular license with an overwhelming 45% share, compared with GPL v2 with only 13%, Apache 11%.

Leading trends

What is the difference between a restrictive license and a loose license? Are companies afraid that if they use software with restricted licenses, will they lose control of their private software as Balmer says? In fact, this may be the case. For example, Google disables the Affero GPL software.

Jim Farmer, Chairman of Instructional Media + Magic, is a developer of open-source education technologies. He believes that many companies do not use restrictive licenses to avoid legal issues. "The problem lies in complexity. The higher the complexity of a license, the higher the possibility of being taken to court by another person for a behavior. High complexity is more likely to cause litigation, "he said.

He added that this fear of restrictive licenses was being driven by lawyers who suggested that their clients use the software with the MIT or Apache 2.0 license and explicitly opposed the software with the Affero license.

He said that this will have an impact on software developers, because if the company avoids the use of restricted License Software and developers want their own software to be used, they will use new software with a loose license.

However, Greg Soper, CEO of SalesAgility (the company behind open-source SuiteCRM), believes that this change to loose licenses is also driven by some developers. "Look at applications like Rocket. Chat. Developers could have chosen a GPL 2.0 or Affero license, but they chose a loose license, "he said. "This gives this application the greatest opportunity, because a proprietary software vendor can use it without harming their products and does not need to use open-source licenses for their products. In this way, if a developer wants a third-party application to use his or her application, he has reason to select a loose license ."

Soper pointed out that restricted licenses are committed to helping open-source projects succeed by preventing developers from taking others' code and making changes, but not returning the results to the community. "Affero licenses are important to the healthy development of our products, because if someone uses our code development to do better than us, they will not return the code back, it will kill our products, "he said. "The Rocket. Chat is different because if it uses Affero, it will pollute the company's intellectual property rights, so the company will not use it. Different licenses have different use cases ."

Michael Meeks, who once worked in Gnome and OpenOffice and now an open-source developer of LibreOffice, agreed with Jim Farmer that many companies are indeed concerned about the law, select software with a loose license. "The copyleft license is risky, but it also has great benefits. Unfortunately, people listen to lawyers, while lawyers only talk about risks, but never tell you that some things are safe ."

Balmer has been making his wrong comments for the past 15 years, but the FUD it generates has an impact-even if the transition from a restricted license to a loose license is not his purpose.

From: http:// OS .51cto.com/art/201611/521560.htm

Address: http://www.linuxprobe.com/open-source-mean.html