Se preguntan acertadamente los franceses :

« Trop de licences Open Source tuent-elles les licences Open Source ?« , ¿Acaso, muchas licencias Open Source, no matan ellas mismas a las Licencias Open Source?.

Y es una pregunta a hacerse, cuando se mira la cantidad de licencias de software Open Source que fueron aprobadas por la OSI (Open Source Initiative), ¡mas de sesenta, en total!.

La gran cuestión, es si realmente se necesitan esa cantidad, si no es contra productivo para el movimiento Open Source. Sobretodo cuando se sabe que algunas de ellas, y son contadas con los dedos de una mano, representan mas del 90 % de las licencias utilizadas.

He aquí una lista, clasificada por categorías :

License that are popular and widely used or with strong communities

• Apache License, 2.0
• New and Simplified BSD licenses
• GNU General Public License (GPL)
• GNU Library or « Lesser » General Public License (LGPL)
• MIT license
• Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL)
• Common Development and Distribution License
• Eclipse Public License

Special purpose licenses

• Educational Community License
• IPA Font License
• NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3
• Open Font License 1.1 (OFL 1.1)

Other/Miscellaneous licenses

• Adaptive Public License
• Artistic license 2.0
• Open Software License
• Qt Public License (QPL)
• zlib/libpng license

Licenses that are redundant with more popular licenses

• Academic Free License
• Attribution Assurance Licenses
• Eiffel Forum License V2.0
• Fair License
• Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer
• Lucent Public License Version 1.02
• University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
• X.Net License

Non-reusable licenses

• Apple Public Source License
• Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License 1.1
• CUA Office Public License Version 1.0
• EU DataGrid Software License
• Entessa Public License
• Frameworx License
• IBM Public License
• Motosoto License
• Multics License
• Naumen Public License
• Nethack General Public License
• Nokia Open Source License
• OCLC Research Public License 2.0
• PHP License
• Python license (CNRI Python License)
• Python Software Foundation License
• RealNetworks Public Source License V1.0
• Ricoh Source Code Public License
• Sleepycat License
• Sun Public License
• Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0
• Vovida Software License v. 1.0
• W3C License
• wxWindows Library License
• Zope Public License

Superseded licenses

• Apache Software License 1.1
• Common Public License 1.0
• Artistic license 1.0
• Eiffel Forum License V1.0
• Lucent Public License (Plan9)
• Mozilla Public License 1.0 (MPL)

Licenses that have been voluntarily retired

• Intel Open Source License
• Jabber Open Source License
• MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License)
• Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)

Uncategorized Licenses

• Affero GNU Public License
• Boost Software License (BSL1.0)
• Common Public Attribution License 1.0 (CPAL)
• European Union Public License (link to every language’s version on their site)
• GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)
• GNU Library or « Lesser » General Public License version 3.0 (LGPLv3)
• ISC License
• Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)
• Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL)
• MirOS Licence
• Non-Profit Open Software License 3.0
• NTP License
• Reciprocal Public License 1.5 (RPL1.5)
• Simple Public License 2.0