Open source makes the technology world go ’round, forming as much as 90% of the modern software stack via frameworks; libraries; databases; operating systems; and countless standalone applications.
The benefits of open source software are well understood, promising greater control and transparency. However, there’s a perennial struggle between the open source and proprietary realms, leading many companies to retreat from open source to protect their commercial interests. At the heart of all this is the thorny issue of licensing.
There are two broad kinds of licenses that meet the formal open source definition as laid out by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). “Permissive” licenses carry few restrictions in terms of how users can modify and distribute the…