When it comes to picking open source licenses, developer community has this kid-in-the-salon patience. Dealing with necessary evil is both time consuming and confusing as hell.

With nearly 73 open source licenses ( and many more in non-OSI/FSF space), it’s never easy for new developers to take one license and run with it. Open source licenses, as they exist, have more similarity with food items than with legal contracts they aim to establish. Some developers prefer hot spices and some prefer extra salt. This causes all sorts of headache for - developers who want to reuse the code and user community working hard to stay clear of any legal liabilities.

Bruce Perens, long time open source advocate, has written a sort of mea culpa post, elaborating on the license proliferation problem. Instead of using license attributes such as copyright or copyleft, he is simplifying by stating the license objectives:

1. A “gift” license:

This is as unrestrictive as possible, which allows the licensee to combine the work with either Open Source or proprietary software.

2. A “sharing with rules” license:

This says “be my partner” even to companies you might not always trust, for example your worst competitors in the market, because if they improve the product, they have to share.

3. An “in-between” license:

This is for making software libraries under the “sharing with rules” paradigm, but which are usable in proprietary software.

With these three sorts of licenses, we can fulfill most of the different business purposes that there might be for an Open Source development.

Further, he has mapped most appropriate FSF approved licenses to these three objectives. Apache License 2.0 is a gift license, GPL 3 fits the bill for ’sharing with rules’ license and in-between license category goes to LGPL 3.

SaaS, and it’s recent avatar of cloud computing, is a different beast. Affero GPL3 takes care of the SaaS clause. It’s not as popular as other three licenses and that says a lot about the lack of education in this matter.

If we were deciding this on pure legal merit then probably this would have been long settled. Like religion, developers have this, sometimes irrational, devotion to a particular school of thought. I can already see people complaining about GPL 3 and complete omission of BSD or MIT license.

So take Perens advice as it’s a great way to simplify the debate. In-fact insist on this simplified classification when ‘commercial’ open source company pitches any product.

This news almost reminds me of Jeff Goldblum rant in Jurassic Park:

No hold on, this is not some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs, uh, *had* their shot, and nature *selected* them for extinction!

I know my analogy is bit harsh but Sun’s decision to open source Netscape Web Server ( aka iPlanet Web Server) reminds of just that. That cynicism aside, I am sure there will be huge academic value in exploring the source code. Jyri Virkki writes on Sun blog about this decision:

Well, technically it is not exactly the Web Server product, since the open sourced code does not include some of the value-add components such as the administration framework. But it is the real deal, the massively scalable web server core which is used in the JES Web Server 7.0 product is now all open source!

This marks another milestone in the very long history of this web server. Back in the 90’s this was the Netscape Enterprise Server, which later morphed into the iPlanet Web Server during the Sun|Netscape Alliance. After some years it was renamed the SunONE Web Server and most recently renamed again to the JES Web Server (Sun just like to keep you confused, thus the constant renaming of the product!)

Source code will have BSD license, which is very interesting from Sun point of view. Company has long championed their own CDDL license and used GPL in many occasions.

Microsoft, along with Marchex, is under the gun for using aggressive mobile advertising methods. Microsoft acquired Smart Tonic in 2007. SmartTonic aims to provide all-round spanning ad serving technology to ad management. This all round approach, involving over the top call tracking, has made Center for Digital Democracy very unhappy. Here is a full report:

FTCmobile Complaint - Free Legal Forms

Report specifically singles out Marchex and Smart Tonic. Application developers can also get into legal tangles if they are not careful about the choice of mobile ad network. Smart Tonic customers include heavyweights - MSN Mobile, Orange, Virgin, Digital Spy, and Goal.com, Renault, BMW, Paramount Pictures, EA Games, Coca-Cola, Reuters, and HP.

More you read, and we are reading more, more we run the risk of losing common sense. Media is changing, you can’t deny that. Source of information and diversity in opinion both are increasing exponentially. Can trust follow that same mathematical trajectory? It’s possible but we are not wired for instant trust the way we are wired for instant gratification.

Two different studies were conducted to gauge how online consumers react to blogs. Forrestor Research group conducted research on corporate blogging. They focused on corporate blogging as all their clients come from that segment. Unsurprisingly they found most of the corporate blogs, like most of the corporate websites, suck. This finding was expected as alternative outcome would have meant - ‘Why the heck we need Forrestor consulting if our blog strategy works?’.

Shameless corporate blogging, like aggressive website marketing pitch, is asphyxiating.  People don’t trust self patting and there is more trust if corporate blogging comes from customer service department as against hyper-ventilating marketing group. As per the survey corporate blogging sucks so bad that it ranks among other unwashed out lets such as direct mail. Ouch.

Josh Bernoff wrote on Forrestor blog:

‘Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. If you’re a corporate blogger or somebody who advises companies, you need to take this into account.’

Non-corporate blogging is a different game. It’s mostly man-to-man contest and both parties have limited agenda to worry about, chances for gaining reader’s trust are higher here. That is an important indicator as confirmed by recent study done conducted by BuzzLogic and Jupiter Research.

While the rise of blog readership in recent years is no secret, the power of blogs to influence what people buy is less established. But as a recent study reveals, that power is significant — so much that a majority of blog readers say blogs are useful when they make purchases.

The study, which polled 2,210 people and was released this fall, found that the increase in blog readership from 2004 to 2008 was 300 percent; 47 percent of online consumers now read blogs.

Half of blog readers said blogs were useful when they were considering what purchases to make, and more than half of that group said they looked at a blog just when they were about to buy something.

Blog readers are also more likely to trust advertising on a blog than on a social network like Facebook, the study found; 25 percent said they trust blog ads, with 19 percent trusting social network ads.

Acquiring instant trust is something we engineers are still working on. We will get there sooner or later. In the meantime following basic tips will help in a big way in adding trust to your corporate blog.

Net takeway is simple. If you have a product then you should have a credible blog as well. If not then chances are that your competitors are blogging eating your lunch.