Posted by andy@assembla.com Sat, 01 Apr 2006 20:19:00 GMT

Different licenses serve different purposes. Free Software brings forth user innovation. Non-free software brings forth investment. Thankfully, there are licenses in between that can bring forth both, maximizing our ability to deliver great innovations.

We’ve released our software under terms that I describe as “open but not free�. You can download, modify, and redistribute the software, but for development purposes only. If you want to use the software on a production server, you need to get a different license from us. I call it the “Singleton� license, partly because it’s a useful license for developing online services that are designed to be run on a single portal. It has achieved exactly what I hoped it could achieve. It lets potential developers, partners, and customers get the code and enhance the product.

You don’t often see this type of license. Most software is either released under very restrictive terms, without source code, or under terms that meet the definition of “Free Software�. Free (as in Freedom, not as in Beer) Software, as defined by its advocates, is software that can be used and modified without any restrictions. It’s a good thing. However, supporters of Free Software also use non-free licenses for their work and their product lines. Almost every open source software company producing and supporting Free Software also produces and uses non-free software.

I consider myself a true open source advocate for supporting the infiltration of open source benefits across the spectrum of software activities – development, distribution, and licensing. Not everyone agrees. Sourceforge.net is an example of an organization that has lost it’s way and is rejecting non-OSI approved licenses without having a good reason. Obsolescence threatens them.

We recently submitted Project.net for posting on Sourceforge. It’s a big project, an important project, a quality mountain of code being released with a real open source license, but Sourceforge rejected the Project.net application for hosting, on the grounds that the license doesn’t qualify as a true open source license. That was a surprise to us because Project.net uses exactly the same license as SugarCRM, which is carried by SourceForge and recently received an award from them. The license is a Mozilla license with an “Appendix B� requiring that people who modify the app keep the original branding.

Could this be insider dealing? Larry Augustine, the founder of VA Software, is on the board at both VA Software (the owners of Sourceforge) and SugarCRM. Some people might go on about that. Not me. I won’t go on with any allegations of favoritism. I won’t question that there actually might be a “grandfather� policy independent of this specially coddled case. No, I won’t keep bringing it up.

SugarCRM does, potentially, qualify as a special case. They originally released their code under the Mozilla license, and then they added appendix B some months later. But, I don’t think that is really the point.

I’m not arguing that SugarCRM should be booted off Sourceforge just to achieve foolish consistency. That wouldn’t help anybody. Lots of people benefit from finding SugarCRM at Sourceforge, and no open source ideals are harmed in the process. Sourceforge likes SugarCRM for good reasons, and featured them recently as a “project of the month�. It generates traffic for them and more. Sourceforge and SugarCRM are good for each other and good for the software business.

Someone needs to provide services for projects using the full spectrum of open and semi-open licenses. That’s what we intend to do. In fact, we believe there is no clear dividing line between open, commercial, and custom projects. They all benefit from global collaboration. Bring them on.