The topic of open source licensing is distinct from open source software per se. Licensing is the legal contract that we apply to the work that we are sharing. So the article is not titled “Has Open Source Software Reached it End of Life?” Rather the title, and the article’s emphasis, is purely on “Licensing”.

For the software that I wish to freely share with the world, I only ask that no one turns around and patents it, thus preventing me from using what I created. This is the entire point of the MIT license.

For software that I want to share with others under the terms of a socialist world view, I apply the GNU license.

For software that I want to share with the understanding that others can’t make money off of my free gift, I apply the CC-NC-ND license.

Still, this leaves plenty of room for new types of licenses that fit other sharing scenarios. Yes, I can write the terms and conditions of my own license. But this creates friction for those who want to make use of it because so few software developers understand what rights and privileges they need and what restrictions and prohibitions they should reasonably accept.

After so many decades of falling back to the default GNU, MIT, Apache, et.al. I am hoping for more licensing choices that better fit 21st century sharing goals beyond patent protection (MIT), socialist world view (GNU), and no commerce/no derivatives (CC-NC-ND).