Bruce Perens is one of the mainstays of Linux and the Open Source movement, but he has never gotten as much publicity as Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman or Eric S. Raymond. His latest project is
TECHNOCRAT.NET. He sent in a few notes (hit "Read More" to see them) about what's happening on the Open Source licensing front, an area in which he is one of the World's Leading Experts(tm). Bruce will happily answer questions about Open Source and related software licensing issues. Instead of posting your questions here, please send them to
questions@slashdot.org. We'll choose the 10 or 12 best ones, forward them to Bruce, and post the answers in a day or two.
When to Stop Complaining
I'm known for complaining, publicly, when I think something's wrong. There's
another side to that, though, if you want to be an agent for constructive
change and be taken seriously. When people fix what you are complaining
about, you can't just keep complaining, you have a choice of shutting up
or saying something nice. So, it's time to say something nice about two
huge companies.
Good News From IBM
A while ago, I publicly complained about IBM's termination clause in their
original Jikes license. Lots of people read my complaint and made
it clear they felt the same way, and IBM noticed. An IBM product manager
and attorney contacted me, they fixed their license, they released the
license for public criticism, and they put the new license on Jikes
and PostFix (IBM Secure Mailer). IBM is referred to as the
600-pound-gorilla of the computer industry, but in this case they were
an extremely polite and accommodating 600-pound-gorilla that did the right
thing for the community. They should be praised for that. I like their
new license so much that I'm going to use PostFix as the mail-delivery
agent on my own system. I've been using qmail, but its license isn't
really compliant with the Open Source Definition so it's time to switch.
Apple, Too
The Debian developers and I publicly complained about the original Apple
Public Source license. Again, lots of people read our complaint and helped
get the message across to Apple. The press and even some Open Source pundits
handled our complaints very poorly, treating them as an "attack" rather
than the constructive criticism we meant. Apple, however, handled our criticism
extremely well. They addressed our complaints in the APSL version 1.1 .
Again, a big company that should be praised for doing the right thing for
the community.
Other Companies
Lots of other companies have recently come out with software that complies
with the Open Source Definition. They all seem to be taking an OSD-compliant
license quite seriously as a prerequisite for community participation in
their projects, and many companies are contacting me for a reality-check
before they release their licenses for public criticism. I've been able
to save a few of them from embarassing gaffes. I'm currently working with
several really big companies on OSD-compliant licenses.
Ask Bruce Perens About Open Source Licensing More Login
Ask Bruce Perens About Open Source Licensing
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