> For developers looking to seriously develop commercial-class or commercial
> software and resell it, licenses are EVERYTHING, and the specific wording is
> VERY IMPORTANT if you wish to have a business that appeals to the corporate
> types or serious commercial customers (not to mention one that lasts more
> than a few months). The GPL and the various other FSF-sponsored licenses,
> as well as most of the knock-offs derived from it by the corps to join the
> 'open' parade are poisonous (a word my attorney used when I first proposed a
> number of DBMs to her, including InstantDB, Interbase and MySQL).
This statement is a little too broad. The LGPL is designed to specifically
address the issues in the GPL which your attorney calls "poisonous". Further,
I think there are times when the GPL is the appropriate license for the developer
to choose. It really depends on what the developer is attempting to accomplish.
I have a number of large corporate users of work I publish under the LGPL.
They never complain about that license. You are correct, though, that most
companies will blanch at the GPL and refuse to use code licensed under it.
And I agree that the BSD is an excellent choice if you want your code to
be the most "adoptable" by companies and universities. What I really like
about the BSD is its barebones simplicity.
tim.
