Proliferation
Welcome
Name an open source license. Most readers of this magazine would think of the GNU Public License (GPL), but other licenses also occupy a portion of community attention.
Dear Reader,
Name an open source license. Most readers of this magazine would think of the GNU Public License (GPL), but other licenses also occupy a portion of community attention. For instance, most seasoned Linux users are aware of the BSD license and the Apache License, as well as the Mozilla Public License and the Lesser GPL. Each license serves a slightly different need, so each license is slightly different.
A menu of different open source licenses is actually healthy, because it gives users flexibility in choosing a license based on the project's priorities and needs. But seriously, how big does this menu really need to be? The Open Source Initiative (OSI) lists 103 licenses that meet the Open Source Definition [1]. 17 of the licenses on the list are marked as retired or superseded, but that still leaves 86 active licenses that all qualify as open source. As you can probably guess, most of these licenses are hardly ever used, but they still meet the definition, so they found their way onto the list.
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