Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Friday

The negative impact of too many open source licenses

I've been paying more attention to the problem of open source licenses recently and thinking about - and writing about - the adverse impact that overly nuanced open source licenses and zealous open source community members are having on the evolution and development of commercial software. My belief is that the two need to work cooperatively in the larger software "ecosystem" to give us the best possible options and solutions.

Two recent events seem to reinforce my position on the adverse impact of open source licenses too, one regarding the astonishing amount of time it's expected to take for the next generation of General Public License to be released, and the other a prime example of the pitfalls of having plug-ins, extensions, skins, icon packages, and other add-ons released under separate - and different - software licenses rather than as part of the main application license.

You can read my thoughts about the situation here:

    Too Many Open Source Licenses are a Significant Obstacle

Don't forget to bookmark it and come back in a few days too; I'm sure there'll be a passionate debate.