Google Code now accepting all OSI approved licences

Google has announced that its open source Google Code project hosting service now supports any Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved licence. To support this change, the Google Code team have added an option to the licence selector; project developers can now select "other open source" and indicate what licence they are using.

According to a post on the Google Code Blog by Google open source and public sector programs manager Chris DiBona, the team feel that, "this new way of doing things is a better fit to our goal of supporting open source software developers". The Google developers also say that they never liked turning away projects that supported compatible licences or projects under licences that "serve a truly new function, like the AGPL".

Previously, Google Code only offered a limited subset of open source licences to its users. In 2008, for example, the project hosting site had blocked use of the Affero GPL (AGPL) on hosted projects and later dropped support for Mozilla Public Licensed (MPL) projects.

Additionally, as they can be quite rare and are not possible in some countries, the developers are still only allowing public domain projects on a case by case basis. Those interested in public domain projects are encouraged to look at D. Richard Hipp's SQLite project and "emulate his style". DiBona also notes that the Google Code team will still "continue to hunt down and kill non-open source projects or other projects using Google Code as a generic file-hosting service."

See also:

• Google Code celebrates 5th birthday, a report from The H.

(crve)