Re: BCS OS Licence

[Anonymous User]

		  I've recently finished a length investigation into the productivity and potential of open source projects, in particular those hosted on SourceForge. This formed part of my MBA studies.

Having researched the GPL licence I found a distinct lack of compatibility with commercial useage of GPL licenced open source components. The cause of this was the vague way in which derivative works is defined. Whilst in practice this has never been a problem it still represents a huge risk for commercial organisations. I think this reason is the underlying driving force for the propogation of a vast number of more clearly defined licences. The Apache licence is beautifully clear with respect to commercial useage in comparison to the GPL. 

I analysed all the activity on SourceForge and statistically modelled the performance of GPL and non GPL projects to see if they were different. Remarkably I found no significant difference. Non GPL projects are just as productive as GPL projects. I think this indicates that the Open Source phenomenon transcends the FSF's ideology. GPL projects are still the most numerous for sure, but they are no better or worse than other licenced open source projects.

Interesting huh ? I'm hoping to give a talk to my local BCS Guernsey branchs sometime this based around my research. Any questions you have will help focus my presentation and are most welcome.

Thanks

Lee