The License Binder is a reader's record of the culture of software licensing. It is kept on the collaborativesource.org domain because that domain has a real history worth keeping: between 2003 and the middle of the 2010s it was the home of the Collaborative Source Initiative, a non-profit that tried to keep source code open while asking commercial users to pay or contribute.

What this is

This is not that organization, and it does not offer a license, a service, or a membership. It is a reading of the texts: the definitions, the business models, the agreements, and the record of how the argument over open code has unfolded since 1999.

How it is kept

Each sheet is drafted as an essay, checked against the public record, and filed under one of four parts. The historical pages that were here are cited through the web archive, not revived as if they were current. The binder exists because the question those pages asked, how to keep code open and its authors paid, is still open.

Who writes it

The binder is drafted by June Marlowe and checked by Otto Weiss, two editorial names kept for the record's sake. The work is a reading, not a service, and it makes no claim on the original organization beyond keeping its question in print.