> I haven't thought of licensing very much, since my codes aren't > nearly good enough to be licensed. Also, I know that there are a lot of > different > licenses out there (e.g. MIT, Creative Commons, BSD licenses, various GPL > versions, and LGPL). When I encounter them, I know I can generally > use/study the code. If I'm unsure, I can always ask. But, I feel I don't > know enough about the issue to make an intelligent decision when I'm on the > other side.
GPL requires that if someone builds on your code and distributes the result, they have to make their source code free. I am using the term "free" in the sense of the Free Software Foundation. Free means others have the right not only to use your software, but also to improve it. In other words, you distribute your source code. Free licenses do not prohibit commercial use. But GPL does require that code that descends from yours be also free. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > But, what do you think is the best way to approach the licensing I think GPL is the best way. So do many others: there's tons of GPL'd software available. With MIT (i.e. X11) or BSD type license someone could take your program, improve it, keep the source code to their improvements private and sell it as proprietary software. If you license it GPL you are requiring that someone who builds on your software (if they distribute their work and not just keep it to themselves) must also distribute their code. This is often what you want. > issue? Or, learn about this issue? The FSF has a FAQ which probably answers any questions you have: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html They also have other pages that discuss this matter in different ways, for example: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ Dan _______________________________________________ gnugo-devel mailing list gnugo-devel@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnugo-devel
