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from the stepping-stones-to-sofware-freedom dept.
Bruce Perens is working on licensing for a new, post-Open Source era to take open source licensing past the apparent stalling point it has reached on its way towards software freedom. As he noted earlier, current licenses are not meeting that goal and businesses have either found loophole or just plain been allowed to ignore the licensing. A move more towards a contract is needed.
At the link below is the first draft of the Post-Open License. This is not yet the product of a qualified attorney, and you shouldn't apply it to your own work yet. There isn't context for this license yet, so some things won't make sense: for example the license is administered by an entity called the "POST-OPEN ADMINISTRATION" and I haven't figured out how to structure that organization so that people can trust it. There are probably also terms I can't get away with legally, this awaits work with a lawyer.
Because the license attempts to handle very many problems that have arisen with Open Source licensing, it's big. It's approaching the size of AGPL3, which I guess is a metric for a relatively modern license, since AGPL3 is now 17 years old
The draft license is quite long since it covers quite a few scenarios.
Previously:
(2023) What Comes After Open Source? Bruce Perens is Working on It
(2018) The Next 20 Years of Open Source Software Begins Today
(Score: 5, Interesting) by chromas on Sunday March 10 2024, @08:18AM (1 child)
These licenses are getting out of hand. I'm not reading all that. I just wanna post my toys on the internet in case someone else finds it useful. Now I'll have to go find neural net to tell me which license has my favorite nuances I guess.
I asked Bing (GPT5, I think) What's the best open source loicense, and when I asked about WTFPL (the obviously correct option) it spewed out several paragraphs, then deleted them and told me to change the topic. Jesus wept.
In the mean time, all the best generative models take the big-name, organic all-natural free-range privacy-respecting models and then fine tune them privately on stuff that ignores the licenses and copyrights.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday March 11 2024, @04:28PM
I don't disagree, but . . .
I remember some years ago a NO LICENSE movement.
Fortunately it died out quickfully.
Some people wanted to release their software or other creative work with no license at all. Just don't even mention the subject other than to make it very easy to download and use.
There is a real problem with this.
If you don't EXPRESSLY give me a copyright license to use your work, I won't touch it with a ten foot pole. The corporate lawyers will forbid its use (which might be what you want!) The NO LICENSE people said they just wanted people to use their work without having to deal with legalese. I pointed out that without a license, I would be infringing their copyright which exists at the moment they created their work. But don't worry they would assure, I'm not going to sue you. They're just nice guys. They promise. But if they really promise and are such nice guys, they would put that promise in writing -- it's called a license.
Fortunately this nonsense didn't last long.
Infinity is clearly an even number since the next higher number is odd.