open-discussion > RE: Choosing a license
Jul 6, 2011  03:07 PM | Ged Ridgway
RE: Choosing a license
1. Choose a STANDARD license! Serious! NO exceptions.

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This is the list of options: http://www.opensource.org/licenses

I wonder if even this is too generous?! If you click to list by name at the above link, you will see loads of "standard" licences. Listing by category instead, the complete list of those that are "popular and widely used or with strong communities" is:
 Apache v2, BSD-3-clause, FreeBSD, GPL, LGPL, MIT, Mozilla, CDDL and Eclipse

Now, if you look at
 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
you find that they seem to have objections to Mozilla, CDDL and Eclipse. They also object to the vagueness of the term "MIT licence".

This basically leaves:
  Apache 2, BSD-3-clause, FreeBSD, GPL, LGPL
Where the main differences between Apache 2 and BSD-3-clause/FreeBSD seem to be in verbosity (e.g. Apache 2 defines all its terms; FreeBSD is very short).

Demonstrably, some people are happier with GPL or LGPL and others with Apache2, so it's good to have a choice of these three, but is there any need for any new projects to use anything other than one of these three main licences? Things would be simpler for everyone (users, developers and lawyers) if the current plague of licences could be reduced!

Best,
Ged

Threaded View

TitleAuthorDate
Christian Haselgrove Jul 5, 2011
Christian Haselgrove Jul 14, 2011
Michael Hanke Jul 6, 2011
RE: Choosing a license
Ged Ridgway Jul 6, 2011
Michael Hanke Jul 6, 2011
Christian Haselgrove Jul 7, 2011
Michael Hanke Jul 7, 2011
Nicolas kassis Jul 7, 2011
Yaroslav Halchenko Jul 7, 2011
Michael Hanke Jul 6, 2011
Yaroslav Halchenko Jul 6, 2011
Satrajit Ghosh Jul 6, 2011
Matthew Brett Jul 6, 2011
Nicolas kassis Jul 5, 2011
Judd Storrs Jul 6, 2011
Nicolas kassis Jul 6, 2011