Google Code reverses open-source license ban
Google has undone an earlier ban on the Mozilla Public License, an option for open-source projects hosted at its Google Code site.
Chris DiBona, Google's manager of open-source programs
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)Ostensibly as part of an effort to discourage the proliferation of open-source licenses, Google dropped support for the MPL earlier in August. Now, though, the company reconsidered, restoring it and adding support for the Eclipse Public License as well.
"How we think about licenses is getting a bit more nuanced," said Chris DiBona, leader of Google's open-source team in a blog posting.
Before, the company had tried to discourage the increase in the number of open-source licenses; having multiple licenses can increase legal costs and in some cases prohibit mingling code from one open-source project to another. But the Eclipse programming tool project is thriving, and it's better not to block its projects, Di Bona said.
"Eclipse is an important, lively and healthy project with an enormous plug-in and developer community that uses an otherwise duplicative license. They aren't interested in using the BSD or other open-source licenses that are readily combinable with EPL code," Di Bona said. "We have decided that after nearly 2 years of operation, that it was time to add the EPL and serve these open source developers."
And Google has also allowed some licenses that are employed by particular users.
"In that light, our removal of the MPL from the site seemed a little absurd. So, our bad," Di Bona said. "We're putting that option back up for new projects. The groups that want to use the MPL to enable their additions, extensions and more for Firefox and other Mozilla projects are legion and considering their recent summit, represent a very healthy global collection of developers."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
A company/developer would have to be completely retarded to host anything on Google's servers.
just the few thousand part tie and full time widgeteers, appers, and amateurs who will be moving the idea of a "company hosted server" to a dustbin under the clouds,
and the billion or so people who will be using the integration as part of their lives.
we are all soldiers in charlie darwin's war.
i offer
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10028643-76.html?tag=nl.e703
as an example of the "designer" being hit by the comet. won;t be that long til it hits the "developer" as well.
"hear the wind blow..watch the sun rise."
- by paulej September 2, 2008 12:14 PM PDT
- There are two kinds of "open" source: free and not free. When speaking of open source, most people generally refer to the former. A question I have is this: why require a license at all? If code is given away for free, why doesn't it have a simple legal disclaimer (e.g., "use at your own risk") and be done with it? Why is it necessary to create complex legal agreements on what is intended to be free? Who does that help?
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