OpenMRS Licensing

March 23, 2013

OpenMRS

Background

In the process of upgrading the software license for OpenMRS, it seems like a good time to review how we got here and why we’re changing our license.  Here’s a brief history of OpenMRS Licensing…

OpenMRS Public License 1.0

Ok.  Let’s stop here for a second.  At this point, in 2007, OpenMRS transforms from a shared, unlicensed, pile of code within a public Subversion repository into officially licensed open-source software.  So, what is this OpenMRS Public License and where did it come from?  With the help of local lawyers, we hired a lawyer with expertise in open source licensing and described our goals:

  • Keep the platform openly available… forever, but avoid being so copyleft as to scare away commercial interests – i.e., a key goal of the platform is to enable local capacity.
  • Provide indemnity for medico-legal issues.
  • Allow modules to be licensed separately.
  • Require anyone changing the core platform to share those changes, while leaving open the possibility for an exception iff an entity seeking an exception offers something in exchange that the community deems worthy (e.g., BigCo wants to commercialize an adapted version of OpenMRS as a closed product, but is willing to offer resources for a dozen dedicated FTEs to the open-source effort in perpetuity, and jumps through enough hoops to satisfy the OpenMRS community)

The lawyer took these goals, reviewed the available open source licenses at the time, and suggested the Mozilla Public License 1.1 with a few tweaks to fit our specific needs.  So, we created the OpenMRS Public License 1.0 as a slightly modified version of MPL 1.1 and applied it to all of our code.

Living with OPL 1.0

OpenMRS Public License 2.0 Mozilla Public License 2.0 + Disclaimer

In 2013, with some hard work by Paul and help from OSI, Luis Villa, and some other lawyers, we discover that the Mozilla Public License 2.0 with a disclaimer could meet all of our needs, so we proposed the idea to the community.  Overall, people in the community are pleased to see us adopting an OSI-approved license.

OSI LogoOkay, OpenMRS on an OSI-approved license… at last.  That’s cool.  But why Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0)?

 

See our license at http://openmrs.org/license.