License Proliferation Biggest Threat to Open Source

Sun Microsystem's announcement that the source code for Solaris 10 will be made available under the OSI (Open Source Initiative) approved Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) has been met with disappointment in some development circles, according to an Internet News article.

"I think the largest threat, right now, to the open source community is license proliferation -- not Microsoft, not any other threat," [Dan Ravicher, executive director of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT)] said. "If we start to fragment the open source community, which happens when you have licenses that are incompatible with one another, we really divide up ourselves."

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