« O'Reilly launches codeZoo | Main | Building a European conference - Education or Networking? »
April 08, 2005
Open Source Stack licensing
One of the problems I see with Open Source "stacks" is the proliferation of different licenses that are then "within" the stack and perhaps not readily visible (or understandable) to anyone wishing to adapt the components for their own needs. I just took a look at the SpikeSource license for their stack (the "SpikeSource Core stack as a Collective Work" license) and find the terms - um - confusing to say the least. Some excerpts (my emphasis):
The Open Software License version 2.1 (OSL 2.1) applies to the SpikeSource Core stack as a whole, with a few important exceptions for components that are only licensed to us in binary form. ...
The OSL 2.1 license contains both reciprocity and patent defense provisions. If you distribute copies of the SpikeSource Core stack outside your company, you must disclose the source code of any changes that you made....
...Only if you modify the stack components themselves and distribute or externally deploy those modifications does SpikeSource require that you disclose those modifications to us and to the rest of the open source community.
Now I find the last paragraph especially confusing. Because the next paragraph then says:
Individual components within the Core stack are subject to their own licenses. Some of those licenses also contain provisions relating to reciprocity and patent defense, and those provisions are not overridden or superseded by the OSL 2.1 license on the stack as a whole.
And in fact continues:
In particular, you are responsible for determining whether you have created derivative works of those components that would subject you to reciprocity under the terms of those open source licenses.
Maybe it's still jet-lag - but couldn't that be written so that I can at least understand it?
Update: Hopefully, a clearer explanation is forthcoming.
Posted by Matthew at April 8, 2005 03:18 AM