Sidebar: HP Exec Calls for Fewer Open-Source Licenses

Computerworld - SAN FRANCISCO -- The large number of licenses that software vendors are using to release open-source code is becoming a significant issue for developers and IT managers, according to Hewlett-Packard Co.'s top Linux executive.
"A lot of people don't realize that today there are dozens and dozens of open-source licenses," Martin Fink, vice president of Linux at HP, said in a speech at LinuxWorld. Fink added that he had counted a total of 52 different open-source licenses and predicted that the number would likely increase by the end of the conference.
Open-source licenses are approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit company that has certified licenses from organizations as diverse as NASA, MIT and Apple Computer Inc.
The issue of whether there are too many licenses has attracted the attention of the OSI board and has the potential to become a serious topic of discussion, said OSI President Eric Raymond. There is "a strong chance" that the organization will become more restrictive in the number of licenses it certifies, though it has not put such a policy in place yet, he said in an e-mail interview.
The majority of OSI-certified licenses are used in a very small number of open-source projects, Raymond added. "All but a dozen of these are vanity licenses, usually [written] by a corporate legal department with too much time on its hands [and] used on exactly one project," he said.
But Fink contended that the number of open-source licenses is already out of hand. "There really is no value, and there is only confusion in having that many licenses," he said.
To date, HP hasn't seen the need to create a new license for its own open-source contributions, choosing instead to release its software under existing licenses, Fink said. "I approve on average three to five open-source projects and contributions every single week," he said, directly addressing other vendors at the conference. "If I have never had to create a new license, I have a really hard time understanding why you think you do."
Any confusion brought on by the proliferation of open-source licenses is probably a bigger issue for software vendors than it is for IT managers, said Chris Hjelm, chief technology officer at online travel services firm Orbitz LLC. Vendors need to ensure that the various products they sell don't have incompatible licenses, Hjelm noted.
But he added that the expanding number of licenses does affect companies such as Chicago-based Orbitz, which uses a variety of open-source software. "If everyone sort ofopted out of the licensing game, it would make everyone's life a little easier," Hjelm said.
Orbitz is currently using a tool developed by Waltham, Mass.-based Black Duck Software Inc. to audit its internal open-source code. The product, called ProtexIP, lets IT managers track the open-source contributions of their software developers and help ensure that their companies comply with open-source licensing terms. "The promise is that they'll manage this complexity," Hjelm said.
For software vendors toying with the idea of adding to the plethora of open-source licenses, Fink offered some final words of advice in his speech. "If you're out there and you're a vendor and you're planning to create a new license -- stop," he said. "Please don't."