License to Steal
There are so many license acronyms I can't keep them all straight:
Open Source licenses
- Apache Software License
- Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license
- Mozilla [TM] Public License (MPL)
- Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
Free Software Foundation licenses
- GNU General Public License (GPL)
- Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
Community Source licenses
- Sun Community Source License (SCSL): for Java[TM] platform, for Jini[TM] technology
- Java Research License (JRL)
Document licenses
- Creative Commons license
- Sun Public Documentation License (PDL)
- Open Publication License
- GNU Free Documentation License (FDL)
...A variety of licenses have been created to meet the different needs of open source projects---the original Berkeley Unix was released under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license, Linux and Emacs use the GNU General Public License (GPL), while Netscape created the Mozilla[TM] Public License (MPL) for its browser. Companies like IBM and Sun have written a variety of licenses including the Common Public License (CPL), Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL), and Sun Community Source License (SCSL). Over 40 different licenses have been certified as meeting the criteria for open source by the Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source definition (http://www.opensource.org), and it is unknown how many additional licenses have been created for use by other open source projects.
This large number of possible licenses creates confusion for people considering participating in an open source project. When choosing a license for your project it is best to use one of the few, well-known existing licenses rather than trying to create a new one. Which license is best for your project will depend on your reasons for choosing to do open source development.
Many people equate open source with the various open source licenses, but the license is only a gate that people pass through. If people are not willing to agree to the terms of the license, then they don't pass through the gate. However for those people who do accept, the license doesn't specify how they will work together; it merely defines some very basic ground rules....
The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees.
The term "free software" came into use at about the same time that Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT, launched the GNU Project, and began writing the software that would eventually become the core of the free software community: emacs, the GNU "C" compile (gcc), the "C" libraries, and a few others.
Richard wanted to give users "freedom" and he called the GNU Project software "free software." For him, "freedom" was primarily a social and moral goal rather than an economic one. He felt that users had the right to know what the software on their computers was doing and that software that didn't allow this "freedom" was socially and morally wrong. He promoted the idea (and still does) that free software represents the ideal of "free as in freedom." It was a side benefit of the process that the software could be used and distributed at no cost.
When Linus Torvolds created the first versions of the Linux operating system, he used all the GNU tools that had been developed by the GNU Project....
But there were others who believed that the name "free software" worked against the growth and acceptance of Linux and other free software applications. They felt the name was confusing and that explaining it to managers and business people was too difficult. And the ideas behind "free as in freedom" didn't always excite management as much as it did those who were spending countless hours developing it. Another problem was that the word "free" was sometimes equated with "cheap." Many felt that if the software was "free," it must not be worth much.
This group of people, led by hacker and free software developer Eric Raymond and Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute, proposed that the name "open source" be used instead of the term "free software."
Richard Stallman didn't support this new name. According to Richard: "Teaching new users about freedom became more difficult in 1998, when a part of the community decided to stop using the term 'free software' and say 'open source software' instead."
Stallman continued, "Some who favored this term aimed to avoid the confusion of 'free' with 'gratis' - a valid goal. Others, however, aimed to set aside the spirit of principle that had motivated the free software movement and the GNU project, and to appeal instead to executives and business users, many of whom hold an ideology that places profit above freedom, above community, above principle. Thus, the rhetoric of 'open source' focuses on the potential to make high-quality, powerful software, but shuns the ideas of freedom, community, and principle."...
And if we all hold hands a mind mapping program will materialize.
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