Today Socialtext submitted the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) to the Open Source Initiative (OSI). OSI is a community appointed body responsible for open source licensing. OSI is the creator of the Open Source Definition (OSD), certifies licenses as OSI Certified, guards against license proliferation and gives meaning to the term open source. Socialtext is the first an only company with a Mozilla Public License (MPL) plus Attribution license (amongst 40+ commercial open source businesses) to seek OSI Certification. We do not, however, consider ourselves open source until all our licenses are OSI Certified.
We have been working through this process for some time. Today the submitted CPAL can be found here and we look forward to the open conversation on OSI’s license-discuss mailing list. For those interested in a summary of our submission, here it is:
Tomorrow we will post to the wiki an expanded FAQ and guide for applying the CPAL to your own project or product. We don’t recommend doing so until OSI approves it, as a disclaimer, and provide it for broad understanding of the potential of this license to serve community and commercial needs. If not, heal a growing rift in the community overall.
Subscribe to our blog
Subscribe to our newsletter
Watch us on YouTube