The Ubuntu community has contributed 12232 ideas, 57574 comments, 1174524 votes
Idea
#8333: Prevent license proliferation
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-16
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Written by Eldmannen the 10 May 08 at 16:02.
Category: Others.
Related to:
Nothing/Others.
Status: New
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Description
Try to prevent license proliferation.
License proliferation is a problem in the open source ecosphere that occurs when a piece of software is licensed under a custom vanity license instead of an established standard license such as the GPL or BSD license.
The main problem is that re-use of source code sometimes can become impossible due to license incompatibility. There are other problems too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation
Ubuntu can do this by not including software which uses vanity licenses.
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Comments
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Eldmannen wrote on the 10 May 08 at 16:15
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Example of vanity licenses;
* Eiffel Forum License
* IBM Public License
* Intel Open Source License
* Jabber Open Source License
* MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License
* Motosoto Open Source License
* NetHack General Public License
* Nokia Open Source License
* OCLC Office of Research Open Source License
* Open Group Test Suite License
* Q Public License
* Ricoh Public Source License
* Sleepycat License
* Sun Industry Standard License
* Sun Public License
* Sybase Open Watcom License
* Vovida Open Source License
* W3C Software Notice And License
* wxWindows License
* X.Net License
* zlib/png License
* Zope Public License
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steve196 wrote on the 10 May 08 at 17:05
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I am an opponent of "educating" people by restricting choices and features or trying to exert pressure on companies that way.
The opponent for Ubuntu to beat is pirated Windows XP and that does not care about licenses but just runs everything you install on it.
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Eldmannen wrote on the 10 May 08 at 17:24
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People can still run whatever they want on Ubuntu and not care about licenses.
End-users are free and should be free to install use use whatever software they want regardless of licenses.
The problem is that it software with custom vanity licenses does not integrate with the open source ecosphere.
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vexorian wrote on the 10 May 08 at 19:18
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There's no really a problem with this.
Your suggestion is mostly "remove most software shipped through ubuntu"
It is a great idea, just to prevent a problem that doesn't really exist, ubuntu would miss firefox, zip extraction, PNG rendering, a lot of hardware support, and that's just the beginning...
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Eldmannen wrote on the 10 May 08 at 19:53
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License proliferation is a problem.
People use a custom vanity licenses instead of an established license, and it becomes legally impossible to incorporate code elsewhere.
Example, we cant have ZFS and DTrace in Linux.
No, I did suggest to remove most software shipped with Ubuntu.
I suggested to work towards preventing license proliferation.
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mlapaglia wrote on the 10 May 08 at 22:39
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This would be an interesting idea, but I think people are misunderstanding you.
The whole point of open source software is to have programming on your computer that is 100% free. I love the feeling of a fresh install of any Linux distribution, when I know everything on my computer is completely free of charge, and I can do whatever I want with it.
I use to be a Windows pirate, and felt accomplished when I got the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite running on a computer, after hours of finding a crack or getting something to activate illegally.
Eldmannen, did you mean to say "No, i did suggest to remove most software shipped with Ubuntu?"
I'd say it would need to be a gradual process. You can kick everything out, it would be too big of a hit. Instead encourage current programs to move to a well established license, while setting up criteria for programs before they can be incorporated into an Ubuntu distribution.
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Eldmannen wrote on the 10 May 08 at 23:28
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Oh, sorry, oops. I said wrong.
He said that my suggestion was to mostly "remove most software shipped through ubuntu".
I meant to reply that "No, I did not suggest to remove most software shipped with Ubuntu.".
I agree with you. We should encourage them...
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Auzy wrote on the 11 May 08 at 06:00
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I actually kinda don't agree with this.. Because I should be free to have my own licenses
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