Open vs Closed Licenses

For this entry I have read the BSD license and the proprietary license for Skype. I will be illustrating 3 things about these licenses that stuck out to me below.

The first thing that stuck out to me was their vastly differing sizes. The BSD license seems to be written in a broad, vague, all encompassing manner using very simple and easy to understand concepts to dictate the purpose of the license. It would seem that it is written this way to invite people to read, understand and use the license to its fullest. In contrast, the Skype license is very long, repetitive and very bloated, repetitively using long strings of synonyms to concretely dictate very simple ideas that could be written much more concisely. It seems the purpose of this tactic is so that consumers will not actually read these and simply agree to them, thus allowing them to sneak in sketchy terms that the user might otherwise not agree to.

The second things that stuck out was not a difference between the licenses, but a similarity. Both licenses dictate that if the software somehow ends up causes any form of damages, that the copyright holders are not liable. With the BSD license, it pretty much flat out states that no matter what you can't go after the copyright holders for anything no matter what the software may end up damaging. The Skype license spends several paragraphs dictating what they are not liable for, but at no point flat out states that they are not at all liable for any damages as the BSD license does. Interestingly, the Skype license also spends a fair bit of time dictating what belongs to what company, presumably spreading around liabilities.

The final thing that stuck out specifically about the Skype license is that they pretty much state that you don't own anything and that they can change anything as they will without notice. If you purchase a phone number from them, in the eula they state that you do not own it, that they can change it at any time and that you cannot transfer ownership to another person if you wish. It also states that any content you put up can be taken down for any reason at any time and they are not required to put it back up or return it to you. They also reserve the right to cancel your account at any time if they believe you have in anyway broken any agreements you agreed to, which can be changed at anytime and by simply continuing to use the product you agree to the amended terms.

Those are what really stuck out to me about those licenses. One thing it makes me question is the viability of the BSD license in a business situation, because the use of it makes it impossible to hold the creators liable, making it hard to want to invest time/money into software could fail at any time and there would be no one liable for the possible damages or loss of data/time/money as a result of the failures....