OSS Watch team blog

Many newcomers to open source get caught up in licence discussions. However, when it comes to adoption of open source software in larger organisations and governments “rarely if ever do licensing questions come up.” At least this is a claim recently made by Dave Rosenberg (CEO of MuleSource) in his Q&A with himself, in which he discusses MuleSource’s decision to release under the newly approved CPAL licence.

Dave also says:

Open source is thriving in big companies and governments. I can’t even believe the uptake that is going on.

So, if the licence does not matter to these organisations, why are there so many OSI approved licences? Surely just one Open Source licence would do the trick?

I think the licence does matter, at least for some users. Dave does acknowledge this when discussing MuleSource’s adoption of CPAL as opposed to the GPLv3:

There are several reasons [for choosing CPAL rather than GPLv3]. First of all, we’re not convinced that there is enough clarity about the way our software works (typical deployments have Mule touching 2 or more other applications via many different methods like JMS, web services etc.) to be able to accurately explain how derivative works are created. There are also a host of other wacky Java/integration aspects that are not totally clear. Under no circumstance do we want to stifle adoption of the product or upset the user community.

Matt Assay, an advisor to MuleSource, observes:

I find this fascinating. In some projects, derivative works are fairly straightforward. Not in an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) like MuleSource. To ensure maximum community contribution, therefore, MuleSource is bending over backward to ensure its customers and community have an easy-to-grok license.

The licence may not be a major consideration for organisations who intend to be users, as opposed to contributors. However, to be sustainable an open source project ought to be encouraging and enabling all users to become contributors.

Different licences not only differentiate between the options available to users and developers, but they also differentiate between the type of community that can be developed around an open source product. MuleSource recognise this and have chosen the licence most appropriate to their product and sustainability plans.

So, what licence are you going to choose? OSS Watch offer free consultations to UK HE and FE projects to help navigate this, and other, open source minefields.