O’Reilly: Open Source Licenses Are Obsolete

Tim O’Reilly blogs that open source licenses are obsolete because of software as a service and that open services licenses are needed: ‘…And that, after all, was my message: not that open source licenses are unnecessary, but that because their conditions are all triggered by the act of software distribution, they fail to apply to many of the most important types of software today, namely Web 2.0 applications and other forms of software as a service…’ This echoes my January 11, 2007 article ‘Browser Based EMR’s Threaten Software Freedoms’ here: ‘…Proprietary, browser based EMR/EHR’s have the possibility for the provider to control the customer in ways that previous generation LAN based EMR/EHR’s can only dream about. Privacy abuse, security holes, the ultimate in vendor lock-in and EMR/EHR monopolies is more possible than ever before…’

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