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TOPIC:
DESIGNING OPEN SOURCE LICENSES
ABSTRACT
Open source licenses are noted for often being self-referential. The two most prominent examples of open source licenses are GPL and BSD. GPL says the next developer cannot go proprietary, and can only go open source with the same license, namely GPL. BSD says the next developer can go proprietary, and can also go open source with any open source license, including BSD. We provide a framework to study other potentially self-referential open source licenses. We construct the universal space of all possible open source licenses that allow finitely many options for the next developer, and explain why GPL and BSD naturally stood out from other licenses as the two most prominent choices for developers going open source.
Keywords: open source, licenses, self-referential, GPL, BSD, universal space