[opencms-dev] "commercial open source license" (Re: comundus connects jBPM workflow engine with OpenCms)

[Christian Steinert]

Dear Carl,

Sorry in advance - I know that this kind of discussion is rather 
dangerous. I don't want to start a big thing here as this is not the 
right list for it.
> Who appointed opensource.org, to define the term "open source" ?
>   
Nobody appointed them but the term "open source" was coined to mean 
"free software" and this site lists a few clear criteria for such 
software. These criteria are also fulfilled by the licenses of many 
projects that describe themselves as open source or free software.
> As I understand copyright laws NO LEGALLY BINDING LICENSE can fulfill those criteria, since they would then violate the creators moral rights, thus making those licenses void.
Does this mean that you consider the license of opencms to not be 
binding? If you should have a right to use opencms, then it can only 
come from those who licensed the code and from you accepting the license 
- in this case LGPL.

About the "moral rights of the creator": Nobody is forced to license 
one's work under these terms and nobody is forced to use a work of 
others that is licensed under these terms. Free software licenses are 
just licenses: somebody makes a piece of software available under 
certain conditions that the licensee must fulfill to be allowed to use 
that software. Also, very importantly, the original copyright holder 
does _not_ give up any rights - he only grants some non-exclusive rights 
to others, like any license does. And the copyright holder can 
individually negotiate completely different terms with different people, 
sell the copyrighted work to some under commercial licenses with totally 
different terms, etc. There are lots of projects that are dual-licensed. 
Then the licensee can usually choose to either pay and accept the 
commercial terms or not pay and accept the open source terms.

Even Microsoft has licensed a few small programs in a way that matches 
the list on opensource.org and the whole foundation of MacOS is licensed 
under a BSD-Style license. And of course, there is Firefox, Safari, 
Chrome, Eclipse, Netbeans, Tomcat, the upcoming Java 7, Lucene, etc. Of 
course, nobody is forced to use any of these, but it surely is good 
software.

By the way: I am not telling anybody which license to choose and how 
many rights or obligations someone someone should grant - this is 
completely the choice of the creator of a work. But if a license does 
not allow redistribution of modified code, then it might be clearer to 
say "this is commercial software, but when you buy it, it also comes 
with the source code". Then everybody knows, what to expect.

Of course, we can just agree to disagree on any of these points. :-)   
By the way: nothing here is intended as a personal attack or something 
like that.

Best Regards
Christian
> To me "open source" means that the source is available - nothing more - nothing less.
> The information is available to the public, but the terms of its use may be restricted.
>
> Don't listen to those ivory tower aristocrats.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org [mailto:opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org] På vegne af Andreas Kuckartz
> Sendt: 1. juli 2009 10:55
> Til: The OpenCms mailing list
> Emne: [opencms-dev] "commercial open source license" (Re: comundus connects jBPM workflow engine with OpenCms)
>
> Schliemann, Kai wrote:
>
>   
>> We decided to license this module under a commercial open source
>>     
> license. Meaning that one has to pay for the module but gets the source
> code with it.
>
> Does your license comply with the criteria contained in The Open Source
> Definition (http://opensource.org/docs/osd) ?
>
> Please do not use the term "open source" if that is not the case.
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This mail is sent to you from the opencms-dev mailing list
> To change your list options, or to unsubscribe from the list, please visit
> http://lists.opencms.org/mailman/listinfo/opencms-dev
>
> _______________________________________________
> This mail is sent to you from the opencms-dev mailing list
> To change your list options, or to unsubscribe from the list, please visit
> http://lists.opencms.org/mailman/listinfo/opencms-dev
>
>   

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://webmail.opencms.org/pipermail/opencms-dev/attachments/20090703/31a8fd95/attachment.htm>