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By Peter Galli  |  Posted 2006-02-15 Email Print this article Print
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Rosen said he is still trying to figure out what the wording of the license actually means. "You have to make sure that all the words fit together, and right now, Im nor sure they actually do, so its useful to have all these committees looking at it," he said. Rosen also wants to know how and why this license differs from others, and is looking forward to hearing from the FSF about that. He unsure that all the language in the license has legal effect and what the drafters are hoping the legal effect of the license will be.

Mike Milinkovich, the executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, stressed that code licensed under the EPL (Eclipse Public License) remain EPL code under any condition.
Milinkovich has previously told eWEEK that Eclipse is hoping that Version 3 of the LGPL (Lesser GPL) can be made compatible with the EPL to the point where LGPL code could be used within Eclipse projects. That would "dramatically improve the status quo in our view. Unfortunately, only time will tell if this will come to pass, as the revision process for the LGPL has not even started yet," he said. With regard to the proliferation of open-source licenses, Ratcliffe said there are some 56 such software licenses and the issue of how those can be linked together remains a challenge. But the OSI will be announcing some solutions on this front in the next four to six weeks, he said. Read here about how the OSI plans to deal with license proliferation. But, while the draft GPL 3.0 license is more flexible than its predecessor, Ratcliffe questioned whether it goes far enough to cover the increasing number of companies putting in open-source software stacks. 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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