Open Source Licenses: An In-Depth Analysis by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport

Introduction

The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport is ambitiously on open source policy. As a part of that effort, various instruments are (being) developed to operationalize open source in projects and procurement. These instruments are developed in an open source manner and therefor are open for everyone to participate. Instruments are published when everything is reviewed by legal experts.

All instruments are written in Dutch, but also translated to English. However, they're only published after the legal check.

The In-Depth Analysis

One of the instruments now published in English first is the Open Source Licenses: An In-Depth Analysis. This instruments has been fully reviewed by Patrice-Emmanuel earlier than a Dutch legal expert could do so in the Dutch version. Therefor the English version has already been published.

What the instrument does is elaborating the specific legal texts inside the most common open source licenses: BSD, MIT, Apache v2.0, EUPL v1.2, MPL v2.0, (A)GPL v3.0.

The goal is to have users of the licenses not choose the EUPL because "It's just the European license", but instead having them actually understand the EUPL. So the arguments become also that the EUPL also covers SaaS, or has a wide compatibility with other licenses. Or that the Apache v2.0 is more explicit in their legal foundation instead of keeping it implicit like the MIT and BSD do.

Open Source Licenses: An In-Depth Analysis - Open beleidsontwikkeling

A set of instruments

I would still love to publish the English versions of my other instruments, so i'm looking for English speaking legal experts that can do the required review. Preferably making the references to Dutch law more generic to EU law. Until then, these instruments are only available in concept on the HackMD platform.

English concept

Open Source Toolkit for Procuring Standard Software - HackMD
Open Source Ambition Ladder in Custom Tendering or Contracting - HackMD

Dutch published

Open source ambitieladder in maatwerk aanbesteding of opdracht - Open beleidsontwikkeling
Open source gereedschapskist voor het aanbesteden van standaardsoftware - Open beleidsontwikkeling
Open source ambitieladder voor opensourcewerken in projecten - Open beleidsontwikkeling

Dutch concept

Open source licenties: een verdiepende analyse - HackMD

Feedback/ Input

Feel free to give input on the HackMD versions of all the instruments. The links can be found at the end of each document if the link is not posted here.

And of course big thanks to Patrice-Emmanual for his review!