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Open Source License Helper Tool

choosealicense.com

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Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#51

Post by badsectoracula »

megaman22 wrote: post #40
quadrangle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hyperbole in this comment is unwarranted. Furthermore, the GPL isn't even developer-focused. It's downstream, end-user focused. There's a reason many of the most prominent free/libre/open programs are GPL: GIMP, Audacity, Linux kernel, so many others… GPL for developer-focused libraries and tools etc. is where the tension comes in because so many developers want to benefit from the open resources but not pass on…

Well, I'm a developer, and I'm looking at this from the perspective of my upstream dependencies. If your cool library to do xyz is GPL, that means my project that wants to use your library needs to be GPL . If it's MIT or Apache or MSPL, party on. under most CyA lawyer regimes.

What is the problem with releasing your project under the GPL?

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#52

Post by sillysaurus3 »

daveguy wrote: post #45
wglass wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But the LGPL is still more restrictive as it requires you to share your changes. Not as much of a disincentive but it still discourages community. There are two good reasons to go with a gpl or lgpl license. One is ideological. You believe software should be free and that downstream developers must conform to your ideals. This is the Richard Stallman approach. The second is control. You actively want to discoura…

> But the LGPL is still more restrictive as it requires you to share your changes. Not as much of a disincentive but it still discourages community. Not a fan of GPL (because of developer restrictiveness), but I don't see how requiring changes to be shared implies more restrictiveness or discourages community. Can you explain the reasoning here?

In the early days of a software project, the most likely people to use it are business programmers: front line devs who have no say in corporate policy.

Typically, they want to use your code to save their own time. The code rarely does exactly what they need, so they almost always need to make changes. And since they are required under their NDA not to disclose any company related work, this prevents them from incorporating your code.

I have no feelings about this one way or another, but it's an answer to your question.

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#53

Post by mycl »

ta76567656 wrote: post #12
vortico wrote: post #10

May I recommend replacing The Unlicense with CC0? ( https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode ). It has all the same bullet points except is a bit tighter in countries where a public domain release is not legally valid. Unfortunately it is more difficult to release works into the public domain than The Unlicense addresses. The Unlicense is likely sufficient for all foreseen cases in countries except…

I find it so strange that this is a problem... like the top legal minds of Germany can't figure out how to interpret the concept of public domain from another jurisdiction in a way that's consistent with German law? They can't just make a ruling that says, "OK, everyone consider public domain from other jurisdictions to be the most permissive possible license under German law" and be done with it?

If I understand correctly, the issue is moral rights (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights). In some jurisdictions, including Germany, these rights cannot be waived.

For example, in such a jurisdiction, if I release a piece of code under a public domain equivalent license, you would have to give me credit as the author even if the license explicitly says you don't have to: the right to be identified as the author is a moral right that I cannot waive, legally.

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#54

Post by badsectoracula »

wglass wrote: post #39

Good comments on each license, but misses a major point about sharing and community. Despite the rhetoric about "freedom" the GPL is a huge disincentive for developers to participate. A larger code base that contains a GPL component must also be GPL. This is a nonstarter for most business users. If you want to encourage a variety of developers to adopt, modify, and share changes, you are much better off with a permis…

> Despite the rhetoric about "freedom" the GPL is a huge disincentive for developers to participate. A larger code base that contains a GPL component must also be GPL. This is a nonstarter for most business users.

I think developers should really start to question this. Why is a GPL component a problem and who is really inconvenienced by it and for what reason are they being inconvenienced by it? What do they want to do that GPL becomes a problem for them doing it?

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#55

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

q3k wrote: post #8
recluse00 wrote: post #4

No WTFPL? I'm disappointed.

Fun fact: at least one large company I worked with explicitly internally documented WTFPL-licensed software as unable to be merged into their codebase, because lawyers. Cf. MIT/BSD/Apache/ISC/CC-BY/CC0 that were all fine.

Some of us rather like that unintended consequence of the WTFPL.

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#56

Post by slavik81 »

benatkin wrote: post #11

There's a disturbing trend that's similar to Microsoft's Shared Source [1] initiative from last decade, used by GitLab Enterprise [2] and Greensock [3]. The code is available for anyone to download, but is not under an Open Source license. They have the option of accusing their competitors of looking at their source code. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source [2] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/ [3]…

Why do you say this is a trend? GitLab is open source with proprietary extensions and GreenSock is just plain proprietary with readable source. Those models have existed since before the term 'open source' was even coined and there have been countless examples of each over the decades.

For an example of things going the other way, Qt relicensed all their proprietary libraries to LPGLv3 just a few years back.

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#57

Post by adrianN »

wglass wrote: post #44
abritinthebay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the LGPL exists. Most code that is designed to be shared & incorporated rather than complete/forked should likely be LGPL (if the GPL ideals are what is wanted). Personally I just go with MIT/X11 but there are good reasons to want to use a GPL-type license

Yes. But the LGPL is still more restrictive as it requires you to share your changes. Not as much of a disincentive but it still discourages community. There are two good reasons to go with a gpl or lgpl license. One is ideological. You believe software should be free and that downstream developers must conform to your ideals. This is the Richard Stallman approach. The second is control. You actively want to discoura…

Yeah, it discourages the community from benefiting from other people's work without giving back.

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#58

Post by jcelerier »

nimbius wrote: post #27

Some of these licenses are like kryptonite for enterprises. For example, I once wrote an ip address manager in python and licensed it AGPLv3. Two companies reached out to me through Github not to talk about features or bugs, but to demand I change the license to BSD. after a dozen or so random bug reports insisting I had no right to use AGPL, AGPL was not a real license, and even a handful of Outlook meeting invites…

I put all my personal projects as AGPLv3 and thankfully never had this problem

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#59

Post by rmc »

q3k wrote: post #8
recluse00 wrote: post #4

No WTFPL? I'm disappointed.

Fun fact: at least one large company I worked with explicitly internally documented WTFPL-licensed software as unable to be merged into their codebase, because lawyers. Cf. MIT/BSD/Apache/ISC/CC-BY/CC0 that were all fine.

Include Google:

https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#bann...

Re: Open Source License Helper Tool

#60

Post by scbrg »

megaman22 wrote: post #32
nimbius wrote: post #27

Some of these licenses are like kryptonite for enterprises. For example, I once wrote an ip address manager in python and licensed it AGPLv3. Two companies reached out to me through Github not to talk about features or bugs, but to demand I change the license to BSD. after a dozen or so random bug reports insisting I had no right to use AGPL, AGPL was not a real license, and even a handful of Outlook meeting invites…

GPL is kryptonite if you want anybody outside a narrow slice of developers to use or care about your work. Unless idealogical purity trumps practicality in your mind, it's a nonstarter. NPM or Nuget under more restrictive license regimes would never get off the ground.

How would a GPL licensed NPM affect anything? Are you in the habit of including NPM in your software and shipping a closed source version of it to paying customers? Is this a common way of using NPM?
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