Which license should be chosen as the agreement for their open source software has always puzzled many developers and companies. Now some lawyers have given very clear views and very precise conclusions.
On October 17, at the Open Source Law Evangelism Forum, Wang Dongfang, lawyer of Ladas&Parry Law Firm and chief representative of China, said that if it is system, tool, or interface code, GPL license (including GPL LGPL, AGPL) are often wise, and can unite more developers to modify software code to better quality.
Wang Dongfang's topic of the day was "Open Source License Selection - From Hongmeng OS". Hongmeng OS kernel is open source based on BSD-3-Clause protocol, and most other components are Apache 2.0. Wang Dongfang believes that if Huawei were more aggressive, the use of GPL licenses might help Hongmeng gain more support from global developers.
In Wang Dongfang's opinion, Linux has achieved such great success, on the one hand, because it is the earliest high-quality code, on the other hand, the GPL license may also play a greater role
Talking about the license selection of enterprise open source projects at present, Wang Dongfang revealed that many enterprises she has contacted are talking about open source, especially this year, she has received more enterprise consulting than the previous five years combined. During this period, Wang Dongfang also felt the fear of GPL within the enterprise. The enterprise worried that GPL would infect the self-developed code.
In fact, even if enterprises use GPL in the R&D process, they can also avoid infection in some ways. Wang Dongfang introduced that GPL allows encapsulation on the basis of software licensed by GPL, and can also use standard interface calls or dynamic links to separate program modules from each other to form independent files to distinguish code, "It is hoped that enterprises can form a kind of atmosphere, and don't turn pale when talking about GPL. If you feel that your special core code needs to be different from the code under the GPL license, you can consult open source or legal experts to find solutions, rather than simply exclude GPL."