Next: Company Smell. Previously: On Obama’s Pastor.

Open Source Licenses

464 words.

I’ve been thinking about releasing some open source stuff, so I’ve been reading up on Open Source licenses. They all seem to have a significant hole in them: It looks to me like a nefarious person could slap any GPL software onto a CD and sell it to the nearest gullible corporation for $5000. Granted, anyone could get the software from non-nefarious sources for free, but still, the nefarious person would probably be able to con a few people into handing over money for the free software, which is bad, but it’s even worse that the actual author — the person who did all the work, in other words - gets absolutely nothing out of the transaction. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. If someone is willing to pay $5 or $500 or $5000 for a product, I think the creator of the product deserves some portion of that.

Which is not to say I want to go through the arduous process of selling my projects… I’ve got a day job after all. So I’m okay with “free software” (“free as in freedom”), but I’m not okay with nefarious Pointy-Haired Bosses making money from my work without explicit permission. (And if you think there aren’t people out there who would gleefully grab up free software and sell it for their own personal gain, you are pretty naive… I personally figure roughly 90% of the people in the computer industry are sheisters, but then I’m pretty cynical about human nature in general.)

So I would want to add a clause to any open source license I use to prohibit selling the work or any derivative works without explicit permission from the original author. Does that still make it “free software” enough to satisfy the Open Source Initiative? It should, because it still gives users freedom to use and modify the software — it just doesn’t give them the freedom to screw me over for a quick buck.

My ego also wants to prohibit anyone from creating a “fork” of my work under a new name , but my rational brain realizes that the source for such a fork must also be made available, so I could integrate any cool stuff in the fork back into my original version if I wanted to.

I like the idea of prohibiting anyone from using my name or the project’s name, though, as I saw in the CruiseControl.NET license:

The names "CruiseControl", "CruiseControl.NET", "CCNET", and "ThoughtWorks, Inc." must not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without prior written permission. For written permission, please contact opensource@thoughtworks.com.

Products derived from this software may not be called "CruiseControl.NET" or "ThoughtWorks", nor may "CruiseControl.NET" or "ThoughtWorks" appear in their name, without prior written permission of ThoughtWorks, Inc.

Related

Next: Company Smell. Previously: On Obama’s Pastor.

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