Going Public—or Not

In Friday's blog post, I talked about a consultant's recommendation to use the Apache 2.0 license for open-source software development of the Veterans Affairs Department's VistA EHR—and how Apache conflicts with the general public license, or GPL, used by several established developers of open-source VistA EHRs.

Today, let's talk about a long-running schism within the open-source software movement over license types.

A key feature of GPL is that it is "copy left," a tweak of copyright, which means users of GPL-licensed software agree to provide the software source code to subsequent users. Copy left also means that developers who use and distribute the software agree to put back into the communal software stew pot, free of charge, any code enhancements they make.