This is very interesting and informative, and given recent problems with the FSF, perhaps people should take these new licenses more seriously.
That said, I generally agree with Bruce Perens that license proliferation is a significant problem, because of the incompatibilities between licenses preventing the mixing of code that should be one of the strengths of open source software, and because licenses should ideally only be trusted after they’ve been battle tested in court (which license proliferation makes less likely for any given license, since there are only so many relevant court cases). https://www.datamation.com/open-source/bruce-perens-how-many-open-source-licenses-do-you-need/ I also generally agree with him that most use cases should be covered by the Apache license, GPL/AGPL, and LGPL.
Personally I plan to release everything I write under the AGPL until a more convincing copyleft license that covers server hosted software comes along. Any replacement license would need broad community adoption (or carefully crafted compatibility with AGPL codebases), as well as the strongest copyleft that is practical.
The EUPL has some advantages, but it currently looks weaker than the AGPL to me, as does the Round Robin license mentioned in OP. I think I want stronger copyleft than that. The question is, is anything stronger than the AGPL too strong? It seemed that the SSPL was far too strong, for example, to the point where achieving compliance with it may not be possible: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and-the-open-source-definition Is there anything stronger than the AGPL that could still plausibly be used by people in real life?
I use appreciate their work, and the Blue Oak Model is a gem especially, as are much of their blogging, but very little is the licenses here are OSS, rather most are explicit attempts at business proprietary licensing, but in a generic way borrowed from OSS.
That… sounds very stupid? Why would you purposefully prohibit yourself from using any GPL code? You choose to be unable to dynamically link against GPL libraries, and to be unable to statically link against LGPL libraries, and for what? To make some imagined other people a bit less happy?
I like the idea that lawyers have stacks of half-finished licences, like software developers have half-finished software projects and poets have half-finished poems.
Over the years I’ve seen a lot of software developers frustrated that the licences available to them don’t reflect their particular needs and priorities, and that they can’t afford an expensive lawyer to write their own. Licence proliferation is an issue, but it’s a social issue of getting people to want the same things so they can work together, not restricting people’s options so they’re forced to work together.
This is very interesting and informative, and given recent problems with the FSF, perhaps people should take these new licenses more seriously.
That said, I generally agree with Bruce Perens that license proliferation is a significant problem, because of the incompatibilities between licenses preventing the mixing of code that should be one of the strengths of open source software, and because licenses should ideally only be trusted after they’ve been battle tested in court (which license proliferation makes less likely for any given license, since there are only so many relevant court cases). https://www.datamation.com/open-source/bruce-perens-how-many-open-source-licenses-do-you-need/ I also generally agree with him that most use cases should be covered by the Apache license, GPL/AGPL, and LGPL.
Personally I plan to release everything I write under the AGPL until a more convincing copyleft license that covers server hosted software comes along. Any replacement license would need broad community adoption (or carefully crafted compatibility with AGPL codebases), as well as the strongest copyleft that is practical.
The EUPL has some advantages, but it currently looks weaker than the AGPL to me, as does the Round Robin license mentioned in OP. I think I want stronger copyleft than that. The question is, is anything stronger than the AGPL too strong? It seemed that the SSPL was far too strong, for example, to the point where achieving compliance with it may not be possible: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and-the-open-source-definition Is there anything stronger than the AGPL that could still plausibly be used by people in real life?
I see kemitchell, I upvote. Is there anyone else hacking on OSS licensing? Your efforts are appreciated, Kyle.
Like others, I’m defaulting to xGPL these days.
I use appreciate their work, and the Blue Oak Model is a gem especially, as are much of their blogging, but very little is the licenses here are OSS, rather most are explicit attempts at business proprietary licensing, but in a generic way borrowed from OSS.
Most of the lawyers here are also up to good hijinks: https://writing.kemitchell.com/lists/Blogroll.html
None of the stuff mentioned in the blog post is my work alone!
I wouldn’t count this as “hacking on” but I’ve become a fan of the UPL since I found out about it: https://lobste.rs/s/u0illx/universal_permissive_license
I’m defaulting to CDDL these days just to keep xGPLers out of my projects. (Also, MIT-0 for those projects which I want to be wide-spread.)
That… sounds very stupid? Why would you purposefully prohibit yourself from using any GPL code? You choose to be unable to dynamically link against GPL libraries, and to be unable to statically link against LGPL libraries, and for what? To make some imagined other people a bit less happy?
Honestly, I have not missed any GPL library in the past few years. I think that this is a hypothetical problem, after all.
Leaving this aside, I find the CDDL rather fitting for most of my projects which is a better reason, I guess.
I like the idea that lawyers have stacks of half-finished licences, like software developers have half-finished software projects and poets have half-finished poems.
Over the years I’ve seen a lot of software developers frustrated that the licences available to them don’t reflect their particular needs and priorities, and that they can’t afford an expensive lawyer to write their own. Licence proliferation is an issue, but it’s a social issue of getting people to want the same things so they can work together, not restricting people’s options so they’re forced to work together.