open-discussion
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
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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
| Title | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Christian Haselgrove | Jul 5, 2011 | |
| Christian Haselgrove | Jul 14, 2011 | |
| Michael Hanke | Jul 6, 2011 | |
| 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 | |
