To begin with the result, YES. But I don’t mean all open source licenses.
[This article is the viewpoint of Jemyoung Leigh in personal, and has nothing to do with the official view of GNU, GNU Korea or Free Software Foundation]
There are various open source licenses and I did not read and verified them all. But open source licenses must be distinguished from free software licenses. Simply speaking, free software has narrower scope than open source. We can know that. Look at the Open Source Initiative’s page where they listed open source licenses, then you can find GNU GPL there. Well, let’s hear what Microsoft said, they would like to do open source (in exact word, Shared source), but they would never say free software in any case.
What free software really matters is “FREEDOM” itself, not the fact “OPENED”. Open source may lack of freedom. Let me tell you an episode which shows the power of free software:
Mr. Choi who is my colleague in GNU Korea studies in Physics now for doctor’s degree. When he was a college student, he was a brilliant programmer(and is too), and he was making a simulator. While programming, he faced a trouble which he cannot go alone. He posted his code in his homepage, and an hour later he got the code back, the trouble solved.
Free software is the one and only way to utilise human’s mass intelligence, and fastest way for the progress of human race. We can know that just by the small episode above. He might not be able to solve the trouble if he owned and did not post the code, or opened it without freedom.
In fact, the pie in the sky is worse than nothing for the hungry. In that aspect, some sort of open source license can be larger sin, and can be the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Let’s see that some one is about to go from San Francisco to New York by driving his car. And let’s see that he does not know the way. The best way is to go on interstate high way. But that is not the only way. Naive one without knowledge can think various ways. Well, most of the people may think one general way, but by the surprising diversity of human race we may also have many geeks thinking different ways.
BUT once he is told the easy way, his creativity goes away, and his brain, following the law of inertia, would not think another way even though he tries. That way would be around his head. And now, let’s see the teller of the way blocked the way. What is blocked is not only the way. His heart, his thought, and his creativity are blocked together also.
An open source without freedom is sin to human race. Note that while free software is always open, open source does not always. I will write about the progress of human race in my future article on patent.
Any way, for these reason the developers should adopt free software license. I believe GNU General Public License is the best, but if you don’t like it, you can still choose one of the GNU GPL compatible licenses. Don’t ever think to adopt a license which lacks freedom. If you want to make human race go one step forth, DO ADOPT FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE. If you want to make human race go one step back, use any ‘not free’ licenses – I don’t care it be open source or proprietary.