Open Source Is Far From Free
In his highly acclaimed best seller, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman hails open-sourcing as one of 10 "flatteners" of the world. Nevertheless, many enterprises have included open-source code in their proprietary software without fully understanding the risks.
Open-source software is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available. Although open-source software is also called "free software" (see www.fsf.org and www.opensource.org), it is far from free. There are specific licensing agreements that are applicable to such code, which specify the responsibilities of the user of the code.
Determining what restrictions open-source licenses impose on the use of particular open-source code is no easy task. As of March, the Open Source Initiative had approved 68 different open-source licenses. To complicate matters further, each of the 68 licenses is different from the others. In addition to the licenses approved by OSI, there are hundreds of other versions of software licenses, from the idiosyncratic licenses created by particular developers to variations on the licenses approved by OSI. Finally, if developers combine open-source code from several sources, along with their proprietary code, then they create a complex mix of intellectual property that is virtually impossible to decipher and may include conflicts that prevent its distribution at all. For example, software components licensed under the widely used Gnu General Public License may not be distributed with software components licensed under the Mozilla Public License.
Despite the numerous open-source licenses that are in existence, there are some that dominate the field.
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- 1249 reads
- PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is releasedAfter three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. |
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future TechThe metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. |
today's howtos
|
Recent comments
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago