[notheguyouthink]

I'm not too familiar with licensing, can someone ELI5? Eg, normally I just choose MIT because licensing is not a concern of mine. I'd like credit, but beyond that, do whatever the hell you want with my work. Now, I'm not making core nix tools, but should I be choosing a different license?

Man do I hate licensing.

[ac29]

BSD style licences dont require source code changes to be released. For example, the PS4 OS is based in part on FreeBSD, which is distributed as binaries. Sony is under no obligation to release any source code changes or contribute anything upstream. Copyright holders for people who wrote FreeBSD code have no legal standing to sue for access to these changes either (I think, but I am not a lawyer).

By contrast Android devices all run the Linux Kernel, which is licenced under the GPLv2. Android device makers are obligated to release the kernel code they use, so users or upstream developers could use it. It's a bit more complicated than that, because the code doesnt necessarily have to be able to be loaded on the device (GPLv2 doesn't say anything about locked bootloaders or cryptographic signing, for example, and binary blobs that work in tandem with GPL code are a bit of a grey area, as far as I know).

Parent commenter prefers the latter style, or possibly even GPLv3, which imposes additional restrictions on what you can do. See Tivoization [0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

[leeoniya]

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1].

"He has, however, granted "IBM, its customers, partners, and minions" permission "to use JSLint for evil", a solution which appeared to satisfy IBM's lawyers."

:D

Given IBM's history of making Jew-counting machines for the Germans during WWII, that exception is particularly disturbing.

Also JSON [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford

[2] http://www.json.org/license.html

[jancsika]

> "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1].

This is so frustrating. One of Crockford's most persuasive points in his writing and lectures about Javascript is that computer programs are no place for self-expression. When he explains what is wrong with the language, he gives astute suggestions on foolproof ways to workaround the language's weak points by avoiding ambiguity. He's even written JSLint to help the programmer do just that without having to research every idiosyncratic pitfall that would come from just winging it.

Yet here he is-- in a domain for which he has absolutely no expertise-- expressing himself in a licensing clause. Causing measurable hours of waste because Debian or IBM or insert-org-here has no experience with his idiosyncratic license and no easy way to predict what are its effects.

[LukeShu]

Any recommendation of a "default" license to use if you don't care too much about licensing will always carry strong opinions of whoever is recommending it. So, instead, here's a decision tree of good recommendations based on the two biggest decisions that factor in to choosing a license:

                          start
                            |
                            V
           if I modify it, and give someone a
          compiled binary of that, should I also
         have to give (or offer) them the source?
                       |        |
                   yes |        | no
                       |        V
                       |      MIT/X11 license
                       |     (alternatively,
                       |      Apache 2.0, or
                       |      2- or 3-clause BSD)
                       V
                is it a library
                 or a program?
                   /      \
          library /        `----, program
                 V               \
    can it be used by programs    \
     that DON'T give/offer the     \
       source with binaries?        \
           |         \               \
       yes |          \ no            V
           V           `-----------> GNU GPL
        GNU LGPL                    (alternatively, GNU AGPL)

Whether or not you think the "default" choice to each question should be "yes" or "no" is something that people argue about plenty; whichever you choose, someone will tell you you chose wrong.

As for the "alternatives" in parenthesis at the leaves of the chart: if you don't care about licenses, the default is probably fine, but if someone told you that you should use one of the alternatives at that leaf, I wouldn't argue. (Apache 2.0 comes in over MIT if you care about patents, AGPL comes in over GPL if you care about SaaSS)

[e12e]

It's a good chart, but I'd add: is the source code meant to be an example/educational and/or is trivial[1]: cc0 - somewhere on the top right.

[1] by definition trivial code isn't copyrightable - but "trivial" is subjective. If you, as the author feel it is, might as well clearly signal that and use cc0.

[eridius]

If you don't care about licensing, MIT, or BSD, is a fantastic choice. Definitely don't choose GPL. The only people who should ever choose GPL are people who do care about licensing and have specifically made the decision that they like what the GPL does. But if you don't care about licensing, then you can't make an informed choice about whether GPL is appropriate, and it's far better to err on the side of using a permissive license (e.g. MIT or BSD) than using a restrictive viral license like GPL.

[LukeShu]

If you don't care about licensing, GPL is a fantastic choice. Definitely don't choose MIT or BSD. The only people who should ever choose MIT are people who do care about licensing and have specifically made the decision that they like what the MIT license does. But if you don't care about licensing, then you can't make an informed choice about whether MIT is appropriate, and it's far better to err on the side of using a copyleft license (e.g. GNU) than using a permissive license like MIT.

You've just said "if you can't make an informed decision, then you should make the choice that I agree with" (from other comments, you clearly are someone who does care about licensing, and don't like the GPL). It works just as well both ways. You even slipped in some loaded propaganda words ("restrictive viral"), just in case anyone had any doubt that you weren't offering objective advice.

Fundamentally, there's a choice, and there's no getting around that with "if you don't care" defaults.

[eridius]

No, I said if you can't make an informed decision, go with the licenses that are widely regarded as being the least restrictive.

> You even slipped in some loaded propaganda words

GPL proponents describe the GPL as viral, and I'd be surprised if anyone tried to argue that it's not a restrictive license, so I'd hardly call that "propaganda".

> If you don't care about licensing, GPL is a fantastic choice.

This is incredibly wrong, and it's kind of horrifying to me to see you try and trick uninformed people into picking something viral and restrictive like the GPL. You should be ashamed of yourself.

If you don't care about licensing, do not pick GPL. The license exists specifically for people that believe in what that license does, and it's literally the worst possible license choice for someone who doesn't care about the license.

[wtetzner]

> it's literally the worst possible license choice for someone who doesn't care about the license.

Why is that? Because with the GPL you can't as easily capitalize commercially on the work of others at no cost? Or because picking a more permissive permissive license means that other people can keep their improvements to the source you provided proprietary?

The GPL seems like the safest choice if you don't know what to pick.

[eridius]

It's only "safest" in that it puts a bunch of restrictions that the original developer hopefully cares about. If the original developer doesn't care about licensing, then they don't care about those restrictions and so having them in place is counterproductive.

GPL is the worst choice because it's basically the most restrictive license I can think of, and it's intentionally viral, which makes GPL-licensed software dangerous to work with (the source of) by anyone who hasn't already bought into the GPL ecosystem.

[e12e]

I'm a big proponent/believer in copyleft - to the point that I would often recommend gpl v3 or agpl. But I also think you're right - if you don't know/care, permissive is the way to go.

But I would actually recommend cc0. Especially for small, trivial projects - I guess I can see that people want attribution - but I think cc0 can sometimes makes things much easier. This is especially true for projects that are meant to be educational/example code.

It clears up any and all confusions about copy-pasting and so on. The main counterpoint is that mit, apache (Apl) and 2/3-clause bsd are all well-known.

If I had to recommend just one licence it would probably be Apl, due to the patent grant.

[eridius]

I'm agree that something like cc0 is a good idea for sample code, or code that is otherwise intended to be copy&pasted. I don't think libraries are usually intended to be copy&pasted though, so a license like MIT or BSD is more appropriate.

I'm not familiar with the Apl license.

My personal preference at this point is to dual-license under both The Apache License, Version 2.0 and MIT. The Apache license has a patent grant and it also has the nice property where it doesn't include the name of the copyright holder so you only need one copy of the license even if you're using 20 different Apache-licensed libraries. And the dual license under MIT is just because MIT is a simpler and more well-known license, so this is to avoid scaring off anyone who isn't familiar with the Apache license.

[e12e]

Apl (or rather "APL"): apache public licence :)

[eridius]

AFAIK there is no license called the "apache public license". There is the "Apache License, Version 2.0" and the older "Apache License, Version 1.1". I actually searched DDG for "APL license" and came up with something I'd never seen before called the "Adaptive Public License".

[e12e]

Might be an outdated acronym:

https://opensource.org/licenses/apachepl.php (Uses APL)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License (Uses AL)

[Ed: Or indeed, just an old misspelling/error that I've repeated here. Anyway - I meant the Apache License v2]