Licensing

VistA is a collaborative community. In many open source communities, the question of how to make money from open source software often arises.

That the software source code is open to examination (the original literal meaning of "open source") is a different issue that the ones that surround the ability to redistribute that code. The latter is really an ownership of the code and permission-to-use issue.

Most software is made up of modules, and VistA is no different. There are more than 100 separate modules, and many subroutines that can be added and changed.

The combinations of these modules determines the "flavor" of the distribution of the software platform. (That is why there are several versions of VistA.) One distribution may include proprietary modules that cannot be used in any other package, and one distribution may only contain freely exchangeable modules. (In the VistA community there are examples of this.)

Here are some commonly used licenses for software that have attempted to grapple with these issues.

Intro

The VistA community includes a large community of volunteers and as such represents a very large altruistic effort. This includes companies who decide to contribute their own software into the public domain for free use. The continued success of sharing depends on licenses that keep software free and usable for anyone who wants to use it. However, there must be a method for VistA users and developers to make money, as well. Licensing helps protect each of these efforts. See the Wikipedia Free Software Licensing article and the GNU operating system licensing page for more complete information.

GPL license

The GPLv3 license (and the Affero GPLv3 license for network-based software) intends that the software module or package is free to use in any environment, and furthermore, any software that relies on that GPLv3-licensed module must in turn also be completely free. Commercial and proprietary software packages can't use or incorporate GPLv3-licensed modules.

LGPL license

The Lesser GPL license intends that the software module or package is free to use in any environment, including in commercial and proprietary software packages. This allows companies to develop proprietary packages which includes LGPL-licensed modules, from which they can make a profit. The disadvantage is that their products (which benefit from the LGPL-licensed modules) are not required to be in the public domain in turn. (Many companies often later donate their entire package into the public domain, however, after they no longer make a profit from them.)

Proprietary licenses

There is a vast array of proprietary licenses, all different. You never know what your limitations for software are unless you read every word. Most are attempts by lawyers to have an opportunity to create a lawsuit in the future. Some may be called "free" licenses but have many limitations which you will not be aware of until you are in the middle of a lawsuit. No license outside of the GPLv3 license is recommended for software truly meant to remain in the free and open source realm. Be careful when committing your organization to a mission-critical software package with a proprietary license. Also see this outstanding article on the "Open Source Enterprise Trap".

Other resources

• This page was initially adapted from Ubuntuguide's brief intro to licenses.