On 20/01/2008, Iain Wallace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Maybe we need a discussion on the pros and cons of the various OSS > licenses. Recommend me one!
Using any free software license is good, and I hope you'll consider which is best based on how they promote and protect software freedoms for _all_ users of your program. How would you feel if some developer who receive your program can improve it and then tell people, even you as the original author, that you can't share that version with your friends, or see how their improvement works, or build upon their work as they built upon yours? I would feel annoyed if that happened to me - even angry, if I had put a lot of effort into the program. Peter Ferne has suggested that using a free software license that permits that kind of antisocial behavior would "keep everyone happy," but I think by "everyone" he means only a few proprietary developers, not all the users of your program. The GPL ensures this won't happen for software that runs on everyone's own computers, and the Affero GPL ensures this won't happen for software that runs on network servers. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html explains why the GPL is the best license for making a program free and keeping it that way. Because this might program may be run on a server and used though a network, the Affero GPLv3 is better than the plain GPLv3. AGPLv3 is a cutting edge license, just released in November last year, and a good example of an Affero webapp you may have used is http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ :-) Sean mentions GPLv3 may be criticised for being "too complicated" but that seems like a sham to me; the GPL isn't longer than an average sunday newspaper article and is written for a software developer audience in mind. -- Regards, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
