Whitehouse embrace opensource

The WhiteHouse have ditched their proprietary CMS solution and replaced it with Drupal licensed under GPLV2. The is a win for the open source movement since having a project taken on as the face of the American Government suggests security, stability and an willing to take on innovations supplied by global entities. Hopefully the same will ring true of the new American administration.

Microsoft launches open source foundation

Microsoft have dabbled in the Open Source space with their own flavours of OSI approved licences but have now taken a firm step in becoming a bonafied figure in the world of free - as in speech -software. This initiative is dubbed the CodePlex Foundation and is funded by Microsoft.

CodePlexe’s mission is states as:

“The mission of the CodePlex Foundation is to enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities.”

As their mission statement implies it is differentiated from other OS foundations by focusing on how to bridge skills, talent and code between commercial developers into open source projects.

How this will manifest in the growing open source software movement has yet to be scene, but what is clear is that the way software is built, used and sold is changing rapidly and Microsoft are have just turned up at the party.

TomTom: Moves into Open Source Space

TomTom, industry leaders in Sat Nav technology have launched Open LR (Location Referencing), an open source project which aims to be the integration platform for Transport Technologies which are notoriously disparate and non standards based.

According to TomTom “This step will facilitate new business opportunities in various areas of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) such as traffic information services, map content exchange and Cooperative Systems where precise and compact dynamic location information is needed.”

The Open LR project is licensed under GPL V2.

Open Source Mapping

Google Maps is so pervasive that you would be forgiven to think that their mapping software and map tiles are as free as the air we breathe. This is not so and if you develop GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software you will probably use be aware that there are two main limitations when using Google Maps

• You can’t use Google maps offline
• You can’t build turn-by turn applications with Google Maps

Enter Open Street Map – a project that was started to create a completely free and licence unencumbered street mapping system. Maps are created in a wiki style by the public and the data is uploaded into the central Open Street Map System for all to use.

It may not be as easy as correcting a historical inaccuracy on wikipedia but I’m sure there are many GIS heads who will lap this concept up and fill in those hours of not being invited to dinner parties by expanding the database.

Purist’ Linux Distro Launched

A new Linux distribution backed by the Free Software Foundation codenamed ‘Dwyn’ has been launched. Dwyn is the name for Version 3.0 of Trisquel GNU/Linux which is a special blend of core applications and follows a 100% free mandate. This means that all non 100% free software components have been hacked off from this branch so OS purists can happily plant this distro in their garden of freedom.

URL Shortening Service Goes OS

Businesses offering URL shortening services have faced the stark reality that their service doesn’t make any money and have been closing up shop over the last few months.

Tr.im, a company who provided these services to Twitter met that very fate and has handed its IP over to an individual employee who is turning it into an Open Source project.

Perhaps this will enable creative applications of URL shortening and create interesting services which have commercial viability.

Or Twitter will die of death and eventually become a historic showcase for over hyped and essentially pointless software taking related services like URL shortening down with it.

Vtiger CRM: De-mystifying the Vtiger Public Licence

When I say 'de-mystifying' I actually mean trying to fathom a new Open Source licence which is sadly lacking a nice wikipedia annotation.

I originally thought that Vtiger CRM was licensed under GPL (may have gleaned this off a post and taken as fact), or General Public Licence. I recently discovered that this is not the case and it is actually licensed under its own Open Source licence called the Vtiger Public Licence, or VPL. I found this frustrating because not having a brilliant legal mind, I was just getting my head around GPL licensing.

So what is the Vtiger Public Licence and what does it allow me to do? Below are my own FAQ style answers to these and other questions:

What is VPL?

The VPL is a modified version of the Mozilla Public Licence (MPL). Before we look at VPL in its own right and what the ‘modifications’ are, let’s look at MPL.

What is MPL?

The MPL is a ‘weak copy left’ licence.

Copy left means that modified source code under MPL must stay under MPL.

The weak part means that the open source licensed under MPL can be combined with non open source or proprietary code.

MPL has been approved by Open Source Initiative and as a Free Software license by the Free Software Foundation.

These approvals mean the following:

• Free redistribution - You are free to sell or give away the software
• Inclusion of source code – You must make the source code available
• Allowing for modifications and derived works – people can change your work.
• Integrity of the author's source code (as a compromise for the likes of TeX).
• No discrimination against persons or groups.
• No discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use.
• The license needs to apply to all to whom the program is redistributed.

The MPL is GPL IN-Compatible which means it can’t be combined with code under the GPL licence. However, there is an override mechanism in MPL to make it GPL compatible which is 'Section 13'. If Section 13 if exercised allows users to override the MPL licence with their own licence.

What is the difference between MPL and VPL?

The VPL has the following changes:

Firstly, the VPL Licence includes some MPL annotations on the mozilla.org web site. These annotations in Section 2 ( c ) and ( d ) effect the Section 2 clauses (which relate to Patent protection) from the point of commercialisation of the software.

Secondly, Section 13 is exercised which means that VPL is GPL Compatible.

Thirdly, all references to Mozilla Public Licence have been changed to Vtiger Public Licence.

If Vtiger is so open saucy, why was it never realeased under GPL?

The code that constitutes vtiger is licenced under many different licence types including: Apache License, BSD, GPL and SPL (Sugar CRM 1.1.2) which prevent it for being a pure GPL based licence.

And to sum up

• Vtiger is GPL Compatible Open Source product
• Vtiger does not have any attribution clauses i.e. you don’t have to put “powered by Vtiger” on the user interface like you have to do with Sugar CRM
• You can use Vtiger according to freedoms of opens source software defined by The Free Software Foundation and The Open Source Initiative i.e. sell, modify or give it away.