Free and Open Source Software License Management: About this Series. This free and open source series of papers provides straightforward explanations of open source topics. The intention of the series is to simply explain complicated subjects like licenses, patents, and business models in easy-to-understand points. These papers present an overview of Sun’s perspective on the topics. The framework for this and future papers is based on the “Zen of Open Source�, a keynote delivered by Simon Phipps, Sun's Chief Open Source Officer.

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About this Series

This free and open source series of papers provides straightforward explanations of open source topics. The intention of the series is to simply explain complicated subjects like licenses, patents, and business models in easy-to-understand points. These papers present an overview of Sun’s perspective on the topics. The framework for this and future papers is based on the “Zen of Open Source�, a keynote delivered by Simon Phipps, Sun's Chief Open Source Officer.

Keep in mind, nothing should replace the advice of a good lawyer when it comes to software licensing and patent grants.

Introduction

Within free and open source software communities today, licenses have proliferated to the point that, at the time of this writing, there were nearly sixty approved by the Open Source Initiative as open source licenses. From Sun's perspective, the large number of licenses can be streamlined into three main categories based on the attributes of the licenses. The existence of dozens of licenses poses an undue challenge for someone not intimately familiar with open source, making it difficult to understand the characteristics of each license and the distinctions between them, much less begin to determine how to choose a license. It can make it nearly impossible to answer essential questions, like:

• Exactly how does an organization make its decisions about free and open source licensing?
• To what extent are an organization’s choices influenced by specific projects?
• How are licensing choices influenced by the ways in which communities associated with specific projects define themselves?

The answers to these questions are crucial to understanding the terms on which an organization participates in the open source community of communities. They are also essential to understanding the effects of an organization’s licensing decisions on others.

Sun’s categorization makes it possible to more easily describe the differences among license types. This in turn makes it easier to explore the underlying principles that increasingly guide Sun as it makes licensing decisions, to explain how those decisions affect the nature of Sun’s participation in the free and open source communities it joins and hosts, and to suggest how Sun’s decisions might inform the choices made by those who seek to participate with Sun in open source activities.