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By Peter Galli  |  Posted 2005-04-11 Email Print this article Print
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Greenblatt said there are a couple of existing licensing models under consideration for the Template License, including Sun Microsystems Inc.s Common Development and Distribution License, which Sun created for the OpenSolaris project, as well as CAs Trusted Open Source License.

The license will be written by lawyers and cost $100,000 to $250,000 to draft. That money will come from the companies in the community. The license is expected to be complete by years end.

CA said its willing to give up its Trusted Open Source License and adopt this internationalized, common license if its accepted.

Earlier this year, CA CEO John Swainson made a push for open-source platform development. Click here to read more. Such a license may simplify things moving forward, but it will not apply to software now licensed under the many existing open-source licenses, since the owners of the affected intellectual property would have to back relicensing.

If the Template License becomes pervasive, vendors could use it to license new products. "This way, the OSI is taken out of the licensing business, and we will prune the number of existing licenses," Greenblatt said.

Asked what effect a Template License would have on the GNU GPL (General Public License), under which the Linux kernel is licensed, Greenblatt said the industry could not wait for another two years for that license, which is being rewritten.

Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis.


 
 
 
 
Peter Galli has been a financial/technology reporter for 12 years at leading publications in South Africa, the UK and the US. He has been Investment Editor of South Africa's Business Day Newspaper, the sister publication of the Financial Times of London.

He was also Group Financial Communications Manager for First National Bank, the second largest banking group in South Africa before moving on to become Executive News Editor of Business Report, the largest daily financial newspaper in South Africa, owned by the global Independent Newspapers group.

He was responsible for a national reporting team of 20 based in four bureaus. He also edited and contributed to its weekly technology page, and launched a financial and technology radio service supplying daily news bulletins to the national broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which were then distributed to some 50 radio stations across the country.

He was then transferred to San Francisco as Business Report's U.S. Correspondent to cover Silicon Valley, trade and finance between the US, Europe and emerging markets like South Africa. After serving that role for more than two years, he joined eWeek as a Senior Editor, covering software platforms in August 2000.

He has comprehensively covered Microsoft and its Windows and .Net platforms, as well as the many legal challenges it has faced. He has also focused on Sun Microsystems and its Solaris operating environment, Java and Unix offerings. He covers developments in the open source community, particularly around the Linux kernel and the effects it will have on the enterprise.

He has written extensively about new products for the Linux and Unix platforms, the development of open standards and critically looked at the potential Linux has to offer an alternative operating system and platform to Windows, .Net and Unix-based solutions like Solaris.

His interviews with senior industry executives include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Linux operating system, Sun CEO Scot McNealy, and Bill Zeitler, a senior vice president at IBM.

For numerous examples of his writing you can search under his name at the eWEEK Website at www.eweek.com.

 
 
 
 
 
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