Open Source Weblog

As the company explains in its FAQ there is ongoing debate about compatibility between the GPL and the Apache license.

"There is no definitive decision on whether, in fact, the GPL is incompatible with Apache-licensed software. The Apache Software Foundation believes that it is compatible, which view we agree with, while the Free Software Foundation believes that it is not. Both groups are in discussions to resolve this issue."

In the meantime, the company is not taking any chances.

"Alfresco’s FLOSS Exception allows specified Free/Libre and Open Source Software to be able to use specified GPL-licensed Alfresco software despite the fact that some of these other FLOSS licenses are not compatible with GPL. It is a way of allowing specified open source-licensed software projects to integrate with Alfresco without having to change the license covering their projects to GPL."

It is an interesting approach that solves some of the problems Alfresco faced as an emerging commercial open source vendor, and do so better than the company's previous Mozilla + Attribution approach.

I spoke to Matt Asay, Alfresco's VP of business development, recently, and he explained why he thinks Alfresco will be the first of several companies to abandon ‘attribution licenses’ in favor of the GPL.

“The writing’s on the wall that it’s going to be heavily modified and diluted in terms of what it allows or is designed to allow,” said Asay of an ongoing debate about attribution licenses within the Open Source Initiative.

OSI president Michael Tiemann last month challenged supporters on both sides to come up with coherent arguments on enterprise wiki vendor Socialtext’s attribution license, which was submitted to the OSI for approval in November 2006.

While Tiemann gave OSI license mailing list subscribers until the end of February to get a coherent debate going, Asay believes that the attribution license’s days are numbered. “Attribution is going to survive in a somewhat limited form,” he said. “Most people just don’t want to put up with it.”

While that is a good reason for the company to have turned to the GPL, Asay also maintained that it is his belief that the GPL does a better job of encouraging attribution and contribution, either in the form of support revenues or code development.

“The problem with application companies is there’s no protection for you,” he said, noting that there is more opportunity at the application level than the operating system level for developers to pick up code and turn it into something else.

While the GPL does not prevent developers from doing that, it does mean that they are required to publish any code they distribute under the GPL, ensuring any modifications remain open.

According to Asay, this is a more elegant method of retaining attribution than dictating to developers how they use and display a trademarked logo in any modified code. He explained that it was understandable why several open source start-ups took up the MPL+ Attribution approach, however.

“As a company we didn’t feel comfortable that we had the brand that would push people to buy support from us,” he said. “It’s really, really hard to take that leap of faith that you’re providing the value that people will buy from you.”

With the company now at Version 2.0 and the writing on the wall for Attribution, a move to the GPL makes sense, as does the FLOSS Exception. It will be interesting to see how the move impact Alfresco's integration with other open source projects.