On Mon, 16 May 2005 12:11:09 +0530, Siju George <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>http://news.com.com/India+eyes+own+open-source+license/2100-7344_3-5701861.html?tag=nefd.led > > >Kind Regards > >Siju Deepak B. Phatak [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~dbp/ "Hobbies: Giving unsolicited advice to unsuspecting individuals and groups." I hope I am neither the first nor the last person to give Deepak Phatak a little "unsolicited advice" and let him know his actions are only making the problem of open source licenses worse. In spite of all those academic accomplishments, by creating yet another open source license Deepak has missed the painfully obvious truth: The world needs *FEWER* open source licenses. At the moment, it is difficult enough to explain the differences of the three most prevalent open source licenses (BSD, GPL and LGPL) to ordinary people. The sad part is the FSF/GNU has intentionally made the distinction difficult by using tactics out of Orwells 1984 in a futile attempt to redefine the words "free" and "freedom" to further their own agenda through deceit and obfuscation. I see nothing wrong with them having the intention of forcing source code disclosure but calling their legally forced requirements "free" or even "freedom" is at best an immoral lie. Once you get past the FSF/GNU's intentionally misleading lies, one must then contend with all additional legal intricacies of Apache, MOZILLA, Xfree, Sun Public License, and all the rest of the garbage licenses out there in the open source world. The additional legal intricacies caused by each additional license only serves to vastly increases the costs and headaches involved with evaluating the open source options. Creating "new" open source licenses only makes the problem worse. There are really only two types licenses in the world; the BSD license that ensures your freedom to do whatever you want with the code and proprietary licenses from the GNU, Microsoft and everyone else that legally limit, remove and kill your freedom. If someone wants to create yet another proprietary, limiting, nonsense license for open source, they are of course free to do so but please be smart enough to realize creating a new license only makes the problem worse. Any person who chooses to make a problem worse is either ignorant, stupid or malicious or some combination thereof. In the case of Deepak, I hope he is simply not aware of the mistake he has made and now extends the effort to correct the complication of the problem he has caused. Deepak here is the "unsolicited advice" you need to take to heart: If you want to release free code, then put it under a BSD license and make it truly free. If you want to sell proprietary code, then retain your rights and sell the product of your efforts. Yes, you can do both and many people do. On the other hand, if you want to make matters worse in the open source world by further blurring the distinction between the two and increasing the costs of those who must sort through your added legal bullshit, then please stop. The world is much better off without your misguided and detrimental contributions. And yes, I'm just as guilty as you are of having the wild idea of creating my own open source license. I am certain nearly every geek on the planet has, at one time or another, had the misguided thought of creating their own custom open source license that suits their personal intents perfectly but in the end, when you realize the detrimental effects, you'll finally realize it takes either stupidity or malice to follow through with such a bad idea. If you are not personally willing to pay the legal fees of every company and organization that must higher lawyers in every international jurisdiction to evaluate the ramifications of you new license, then please be considerate enough to do the world a favor and abandon the bad idea of creating yet another license. JCR
