Will Project Harmony Bring Harmony to Linux?

Some ideas and debates on the Linux Planet and open source sphere just don't seem to ever die or go away. One such debate is around contributor license agreements for open source projects, including Linux distributions. The issue is once again front and center as Project Harmony has officially hit 1.0 in an attempt to bring harmony to an area of tremendous discontent. This past week, Flash, PuTTY and Mono all with significant news.

1. Project Harmony 1.0: While the Linux kernel and the associated open source components that make up a typical Linux distribution are licensed under open source licenses, those licenses aren't always sufficient for contributions. Open source licenses in the view of some work well for the consumption and distribution of open source, not necessarily for contributions to open source.

That's where Project Harmony comes into play. Over the years, the issue of Contributor License Agreements has been a thorny one. Open source projects, contributors, lawyers and open source advocates all have seemingly different views on whether or not contributor licenses are really needed, and if so, what verbiage they should include.

Project Harmony is an attempt to provide a standardized set of agreements to help bring a degree of unity and "harmony" to the process. Harmony has been spearheaded by Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux. However, it hasn't been warmly welcomed by everyone on the Linux Planet....