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146

answers:

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Is it possible to summarize the differences among various open source licenses in one sentence?

Some require that the source remain open forever (GPL), and others let you fork derivatives as closed source (is this considered equivalent to CC-share-alike?). Some require attribution. Some require non-commercialization. Speaking along this line of thought, is it possible to summarize various open-source licenses with the above 3 criterion?

+7  A: 

Comparison of Free Software Licenses from Wikipedia

And Attributes of some free software licenses again from Wikipedia

klez
+1  A: 

Open Source has nothing to do with non-commercialization per se. Maybe you're mixing up open source and freeware (Gratis versus Libre)? In fact, I'm not away of any licence generally considered open source which requires non-commerical use. Attribution isn't tied to the idea of free software either, but some licences (e.g. MIT and BSD) do require attribution (usually, you have to retain the original copyright notice).

The main difference is the precence of copyleft, i.e. the requirement to release modifications of the source code as open source (usually under the same licence as the original code was) - this is the closest to CC-share-alike. The most prominent example is the GPL. MIT and BSD are so-called permissive licences, they allow you to release derivates under another licence, including as closed source.

CC is a different kind of animal, it is worded generally enough to be appliable to e.g. visual art, music, texts and other contents, while open source licences generally only work for... well, stuff with source code - software. The CC-no-derivates is incompatible with the idea of free software and CC-non-commercial module is more in the spirit of freeware than in the spirit of free software.

delnan