On Sunday 20 January 2008 15:35:12 Iain Wallace wrote:
> Maybe we need a discussion on the pros and cons of the various OSS
> licenses. Recommend me one!
Summary:
1 Copyright notice applied & enforced.
2 No license - falls back to copyright law.
3 Implied license (what you've done) - tentatively allowed to do stuff, but
not very strong license as to what can be done with it. (technically
falls back to copyright law meaning can't do anything, but your email is
an implied license))
4 License with "reciprocity clause". This means "if you do things (eg
create a derivative work) with my code under this license and you
redistribute this, you have to redistribute your code under the same
license". Examples: GPL, MPL
5 License without reciprocity clause. Not quite but close to "do what you
like with this, but attribute me & don't remove this notice", doesn't
constrain your choice of license for derivative work.
Examples: BSD, MIT, Apache licenses
6 Notice saying "released to the public domain". Unfortunately, as I
understand things, not actually doable in the UK.
Since 6 can't be done in the UK, many people who would choose 6 use 5.
It's worth noting that license 5 is the weakest level of control a developer
can exert. Someone can take your work and either restrict your ability to take
changes (that you can release as 5) by either re-releasing your work in a
derivative licensed under 4) or 1). People who are don't like this (for
various reasons) with this often choose either 4 or 1 up-front.
Both the 4) & 5) camps can produce evidence as to why each is better than the
other for various purposes, so I'm going to refrain from that :) Both camps
can give ideological as well as pragmatic reasons in favour of their views as
well.
Lawrence Rosen's book is also very readable:
* Open Source Licensing - ISBN: 0131487876
Different licenses have different benefits for differing groups. One creates
an artificial scarce resource that can be exploited for financial gain, one
can be used with an intent to allow all users to be able to modify and extend
the code by aiming to protect this ability from being taken away, and one
allows the developer to wash their hands of this and make it someone else's
problem :-)
Regards,
Michael.
*This is not legal advice, and any opinions there not really intended, and
certainly not anyone else's or any company's either :-) *
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