Open Source Blog

The initial plan was to separate licenses into three groups: recommended, not recommended and 'other' with the hope that licensors would shun those licenses that had not been recommended.

However, according to the report: "It became apparent that there is no one open source license that serves everyone's needs equally well."

Instead of officially recommending specific licenses, the committee has instead separated the licenses into more descriptive categories: "licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities", special purpose licenses, licenses that are redundant, non-reusable licenses, and other/miscellaneous.

It is hoped that the grouping will still encourage licensors to gravitate towards the nine licenses that are most popular and/or have the strongest communities, however the committee stopped short 'recommending' or 'approving' the licenses.

"We encourage new licensors to use licenses in the 'popular and strong communities' group," the report added. "There are only nine licenses in this group and if everyone considered these licenses first when choosing a license for their project, some of the issues relating to license proliferation would diminish."

The nine licenses cover most uses, and it is to be hoped that the groupings can at least make it easier for licensors to consider the available options before simply opting to create their own.

Fair play to Sun, by the way, for getting the CDDL on the list, given the criticism it received for creating it in the first place.

Those nine licenses are:

Apache License 2
New BSD License
GNU GPL
GNU LGPL
MIT License
Mozilla Public License
Common Development and Distribution License
Common Public License
Eclipse Public License

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