Not all open source licenses are created equal.

1. Open Source FTW!
with Jorge Reyes
www.ortussolutions.com

2. My Name is Jorge
• Industrial Engineer
• Business Manager at Ortus Solutions
• Husband, and father of 3.
• Proud Salvadorean

3. About Ortus
• Formed in 2006, Ortus Solutions is an established professional software
development firm.
• Specialized in mobile and web application design, development and
deployment.
• Creators of 250+ web development tools powering application across the world.
• Open Source Software publishers with a focus on empowering business and
developers alike
• HQ in USA
• Offices in El Salvador, and now in Málaga!
www.ortussolutions.com

4. Products
16+ Years of creating
Open Source Software

5. Services

6. DISCLAIMER
ALL CONTENT ON THIS PRESENTATION AND MATERIALS ARE INTENDED FOR
GENERAL INFORMATION ONLY, AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL
ADVICE, I AM NOT A LAWYER AND I DO NOT OFFER ANY LEGAL AVISE. YOU
MAY USE THE CONTENTS OF THIS PRESENTATION AND ITS MATERIALS AT YOUR
OWN RISK. IN NO CIRCUMSTANCE WILL ORTUS SOLUTIONS, IT’S
ADMINISTRATORS, IT’S EMPLOYEES OR COLLABORATORS, OR ANYONE
CONNECTED WITH ORTUS SOLUTIONS, BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN OR LINKED FROM THESE PRESENTATION.

7. First things First
open-source vs open-source
Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/a-z-word-list-term-collections/o/open-source

8. The Proprietary Software Reigned Supreme
June 1, 2001
“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual
property sense to everything it touches”
Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft
80’s and 90’s

9. A New Century Begins
With a Paradigm Shift
June 4, 2018, Microsoft acquires GitHub for $7.5 billion USD
“The good news is that, if life is long enough, you can learn … that you
need to change.”
Brad Smith, Vice Chairman of Microsoft

10. The State of the Octoverse
Source: https://octoverse.github.com/

11. The Power of Open Source
The ability to bring together authors, users, contributors, and
companies to deliver better software.
What can you do with the source code?
Source: TensorFlow Github

12. Top Open-Source Licenses in 2021
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1245643/worldwide-leading-open-source-licenses

13. Not all licenses are created equal
The Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Founded in 1998
opensource.org
The Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Founded in 1985
fsf.org

14. The Open Source Definition
1. Free Distribution
2. Source Code
3. Derived Works
4. Integrity of Authors’ Source Code
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

15. The Open Source Definition
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
7. Distribution of license
8. License Must Not be Specific to a Product
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10. License Must be Technology-Neutral

16. ”Free Software”
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community.
Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study,
change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not
price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not
as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or
Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is
gratis.

17. Permissive Licenses
• Simpler in essence
• Freedom to use, modify and distribute the
licensed work with very little restrictions

18. MIT License
MIT
ANYTHING GOES!
DO whatever you want
JUST include the license to give credit to the author
and DON’T SUE ME
Angular JS, Atom, C++, Cucumber, CURL, GitLab, JQuery, Laravel, Node.js

19. Android, Apache Server, Apache Ant, ASP.NET, ColdBox MVC, Google Web Toolkit. Kubernetes
Apache License 2.0
Apache-2.0
• No need to make the source code public when
distributing
• Modifications may be released under any license
• However
• Changes made to the source code must be documented
• Includes Patent protection and no retaliation
• Protects Trademarked names found in the project

20. Berkeley Software Distribution License
BSD [X]-Clause
ANTLR, Dart, Django, Gyroscope, Homebrew, Nginx
BSD 2-Clause ~ MIT
BSD 3-Clause = 2-Clause + No Endorsement
BSD 4-Clause* = 3-Clause + Give a shoutout to the
authors in advertising

21. Copyleft Licenses
Licenses that allow derivative works but require
them to use the same license as the original work.
Derivative Works = Same Rights

22. The GNU Family
🎼 We are family
I got all my sisters
with me 🎼

23. GNU General Public License
GPLv3 (latest version)
• Applies to the whole source code when it uses whole
or part of GPL code OR links to the GPL Library
• ”Viral” license
• You are bound by the software to release your software as
GPLv3
• Commercial use is still valid
• But you need to share the source code
• Prevents the used of your source code in proprietary
programs
Ansible, Git, GNOME, GNU tools, Linux Kernel, MariaDB, MySQL, Notepad++

24. GNU Aferro General Public License
AGPLv3
• Considers the Network Usage as distribution and
closes the GPL’s ASP Loophole
• ASP = Application Service Provider
GNUnet, Launchpad, iText, Oracle NoSQL Database, plausible.io

25. GNU Lesser General Public License
LGPL
• Less restrictive terms compare to GPL Licenses
• Copy left for Libraries and their derivatives
• Weak Copyleft
• Based on a Per-Library Rule
• No need to share the source code when distributing
your project if it uses a LGPL software as a Library
• Library used in isolation.
• Dynamic linking explicitly allowed as “work that uses
the library”
7-Zip, GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library, Wine

26. Mozilla Firefox, Brave Browser, RabbitMQ
Mozilla Public License 2.0
MPL-2.0
• Provides less restrictive requirements than LGPL
• Copyleft for files and their derivatives
• Weak Copyleft
• Based on a Per-File Rule.
• No need to share the source code when distributing
your project if it uses a LGPL licensed file, regardless of
how they are referenced in your project (statically,
dynamically, etc.).

27. Permissive vs Copyleft
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzmNA2iySEs&t=193s

28. Which one to choose?
Depends on your own objectives and philosophy
OPEN SOURCE LICENSES = COMMUNITY AGREEMENT
Consensus on how a community chooses to collaborate

29. General Recommendations
Determine the goal for your software
Giving it away –OR– Getting something back.
Apache 2.0 seems to be a good middle grown
Low restriction, while keeping copyrights on trademarks
and dealing with patents.
Use widely recognized open source licenses
Users and contributors will be already familiar with it.

30. 3 Main Strategies
Monetizing Open Source
1. Support Services
2. Subscriptions
3. Commercial Versions

31. THANK YOU!
info@ortussolutions.com
www.ortussolutions.com
Jorge Reyes
Business Manager
jreyes@ortussolutions.com
Luis Majano
CEO
lmajano@ortussolutions.com