Sufyan bin Uzayr, Freelance Writer, Graphic Artist, Photographer, www.sufyan.co.nr

BANGALORE, INDIA: In works licensed under an open source license, anyone is permitted to modify and redistribute, as long as a given set of criterion are met. But, that's the simple definition. Life in the open source licensing world is much more complex than that. Before going any further, let us catch a glimpse of what an open source license means and what are its associated caveats. Strictly speaking, an open source license must comply with the definition specified by Open Source Initiative, as laid out at http://opensource.org/ docs/definition.php:

To quote from the definition itself, “The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.”

Thus, if you license your work under an open source license, you do not have a commanding influence over who gets to use your work and in what manner the said person decides to use it. Surely, you can restrict commercial/derivative usage of your work, but in all likelihood, you cannot essentially make an income (or, at least a GOOD income) using open source licenses.

Further more, another important aspect of open source licenses is the permission 'to fork'. Forks of an open source project are derivatives of the project which evolve from it, but take a different line of growth and establish an altogether separate identity.

Arguably, the prime reason why developers tend to opt for open source licenses is that it lets their software roll on as a group or community exercise, and this in turn enhances productivity manifolds. For instance, Acquia Network, the parent organization behind Drupal, currently consists of 160 employees. Obviously, a company of that size cannot sustain a mammoth project such as Drupal. However, Drupal itself being open source, is helped by the numerous volunteers from the community. Similarly, WordPress rides the wagon of a super-active community while its parent organization, Automattic, concentrates on select issues.

Open source licenses nowadays come in multiple versions. Wikipedia has a rather incomplete list of some of the major free licenses at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_license While all such licenses cater to diverse purposes with the same goal ('freedom'), we shall restrict ourselves to only the major ones for the sake of simplicity. From a small/medium enterprise's point of view, the noteworthy licenses include GPL/LGPL, MPL, Apache License and BSD License.