[wos] Open API panel: Open Source Licenses are Obsolete

[vortex]

Janko Roettgers wrote:

> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/08/open_source_licenses_are_obsol.html 
>

It seems to me that this is a software licencing version of the 
questionable network neutrality debate.

If software is allowed to be distributed and implemented (under say, 
licences such as BSD and GPL), then instantiation of the code (so-called 
appropriation?) is expected and explicitly allowed and indeed desired. 
No obsolesence there.

There is a distinction between content and environment of the 
instantiaton and the context of  the licence under which it is, or its 
components are, released.

On the whole, web2.0 consists of  stitching together open (and/or indeed 
closed) source constituent components together with custom programming, 
customised environment and content data.

Do the phrases "open services" and "open data" even make sense? (other 
than the absence of any restriction of use/reuse?)

I don't believe so. Unlike open source and the potential for peer review 
of static versions of code, services and data involve a continuous 
"trust relationship" (and of course, real world services and data often 
come with their own more restrictive terms of service or licence of use).

A service or data provider may well "do no evil" one day, but may well 
not the next. This has little to do with the concept of "open" or "open 
source".

Baring patents and explicit restrictions, published APIs and publically 
available data is just that. Perhaps trust of such services and content 
is a policy rather than licencing issue.

Which of course deserves its own discussion - but I believe this general 
analogy should be seriously questioned.

shine,

.vortex