The state of open licensing, 2017 edition

This post by @ldodds seems well worth its own thread!

1 Like

My comment:

if licensing doesn’t have real impacts, then why did the open source community recently go into meltdown about Facebook’s open source licences? And why have they recanted?

Because licences induce individual insanity, copyright and nearby collective insanity.

No new licences!

While caution is warranted, I disagree. If licensing has real impacts, do we really believe there are no superior impacts to be obtained through the creation of improved licences? Somewhat dated thoughts on what to look for at [Semi]Commons Coordinations & Copyright Choices 4.0 – mlog

Anyway, many more licences are being created, like it or not. I doubt there’s a whole lot can be done about that. Side note: I’d like to invite all frustrated with the insanity and dwarfish politics of licences to even more strongly reorient focus toward public policy (inclusive of using/mandating those licences for government use and as an addition to the regulatory toolbox).

I strongly agree with everything else in your post. Excellent analysis!

1 Like

No new licences!

Now new licenses unless the authors fully reviewed all commonly-used existing licenses and fully justify the benefits of the new license over the potential issues of license proliferation and incompatibility.