All the other cool kids(Ostatic, VentureBeat, The Open Road) are blogging about “Marketcetera” so I’ll yield and follow along…

The platform which is currently at the 0.4.2 release — 1.0 scheduled for Q3 2008 uses the “FIX” protocol to execute automated trades with brokerages and banks.

Marketcetera has received a 4 million dollar A round from Shasta Ventures and Jack Selby (Clarium Capital (hedge fund))  — the general plan is to start charging for data that will be helpful to the analysis the big boys (hedge funds) do.

Oh, right, that open source thing. I started poking around on the site, and on the left navigation there is a link to “Contribute”… sounds promising… I was redirected to a page with a license agreement… and things get interesting… I was presented with the following license agreement (see below, link here for full version: http://www.marketcetera.com/contributors/display)

I’m wondering… this doesn’t sound like the licenses I’m used to, this clearly isn’t OSI ratified yet… is it fair (and legal) to call this open source (Disclaimer: not a lawyer)

This is the current version 0.1 of the Marketcetera Contributor License Agreement, as of March 23, 2007.

Summary (see below for full license):

The Marketcetera Contributor License Agreement (CLA) means, in simple terms, that:

• You assign and transfer the copyright of your contribution to Marketcetera to the extent permitted by applicable law. In return you receive back a broad license to re-use and distribute your contribution.
• You grant a patent license to Marketcetera and its users, in the event that you own a patent that covers your contribution.
• You represent that you coded and own the contribution, and are legally entitled to grant the assignment and license.
• You may provide support for free, for a fee, or not at all.
• Marketcetera has no obligation to accept or use your contribution.