It looks like the Free Software Foundation is taking a page out of Microsoft’s book and delaying again the final release of GPLv3. Another draft of GPLv3 has been released March 28 for review and comment with additional language to try and prevent a re occurrence of the Microvell situation around patent issues.
Meanwhile, as Mike Vizard, Editor at Ziff Davis, notes in his recent newsletter that open source is still moving on without a new GPLv3 license. When it’s released, it will be interesting to me to see both how quickly the GPLv3 is adopted and who will opt not to use it. That because while the new license has been in the works, the world of open source is still evolving and moving forward.
Appliance vendors, such as UTM devices, are using open source software, Nessus of course went to a non-open source license structure, and some believe that the same could happen to snort following Sourcefire’s IPO. (No confirmation on this, only rumors.)
I’ve blogged before about confusion with the GPLv2, mostly about when it’s used in products, sometimes legitimately and other times not. No matter what your choice of license, I believe that clarity is the factor that carries the day.
Most users of open source would agree that free software (like free beer) and providing source code are the two defining characteristics of open source software. That’s probably true of OSS users who don’t use it in a product or commercialize open source. Commercial ventures have sprung up around existing OSS projects and open source business models are a way of bringing the best of both OSS and commercial software together. We’ll continue to see OSS free to end users but commercial licensing requirements for use in commercial ventures.
I mentioned clarity earlier. I’ve done a lot of research recently around licensing for UNP and I believe that clarity is what people want. No fine print. No hidden agendas or restrictions. Users understand that a business is here to make money. Given that, tell me (the user) what I can do for free, and tell me for what things I need a commercial license, e.g. pay some sort of payment, royalties or fees. Then users, contributors and commercial ventures know the rules they need to play by if they want to use open source software for their own purposes.
I believe open source software is alive and well and will increasingly become a viable business model. I’m willing to bet concepts like the UNP on it. Making it available as a free technology for use in someone’s personal or business network will help in its adoption. Making the source code available will increase and foster innovation for those who want to contribute in that way. It’s a lot of extra work to make a commercial product available under both open source and commercial licensing but with concepts like UNP it will help all the further with it’s long term future.
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