Open Source Software and Licenses

For most computer users, there is not much difference between freeware or open source. After all, you can install both freeware and open source program for free and use it for as long as you need. But for computer programmers, there is a huge difference between them. While freewares never provide you with their source code, open source programs give you full (read 'limited') privilege over their source code. You can modify the source code, re-distribute ( or sell) it without seeking for any permissions from the original author. This seems like a free beer but you won't always drink it even when you are thirsty, and various open source (OS) licenses makes this sure.

There exists a long list of licenses which try to protect the rights of the original authors over their work. Most of these licenses are incompatible with each other, which means that you can not include the source code of a program into your software if it has a license which is different from the license under which you intend to release your program. This creates a big mess in the open source community. Various academicians and programmers hold different views for different licenses, so they release their work under the license they like. And because these licenses are not compatible with each other, same piece of code is written by several people having different licenses. I encountered this same problem while I was writing a module for Drupal, which releases its content under GPL and I wanted to include (not copy, !!) a script which was released under BSD license. Even though these two licenses are compatible, the drupal community rejected to release my module. I have already justified my act to them but if they still reject it, I will have to write the same code again. (here I would have preferred paying a small fee for the script)

So, you see even if the source code is available to you, you can not use it in your work without infringing copyright. This creates a plethora of programs doing almost the same thing released under different licenses. I wonder, is OS community really open and productive. I may be wrong in concluding that to flourish OS, it must go beyond restrictions which licenses like GPL proffer. But thats only my thought, if you have something else to say I am "all ears".