[cassianoleal]

Thanks for your work. Apollo made using Reddit a decent experience, and clearly you had a very large part in that.

User rapnie mentioned the code in the repository doesn't have a license [0]. You might want to review that.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256566

[andremedeiros]

I’ll check in with Christian and see what he wants to do. Got any particular recommendations?

[gtsteve]

Some options spring to mind:

1. All rights reserved - the source is visible but not open.

2. AGPL, to ensure that if someone does take this forward, no part of it can be closed source without your agreement.

3. MIT, which is extremely permissive and effectively you don't care what someone does with it, commercial or not.

Depending on your comfort level I would start with the middle option, I don't think people tend to mind you re-licensing more liberally but if a community has formed and you decide to go commercial further down the road it can cause problems.

[cassianoleal]

This here is the superstar comment. There are other options but this is an excellent start.

[doublerabbit]

All rights reserved feels more the right kick to me

Gives those who wish to learn and stops from anything taking the future glory.

[bee_rider]

Apollo was one of the apps that was basically giving up due the API changes, right? If they aren’t doing anything with the code, might as well let people fork it.

Just not MIT or BSD, I like these sorts of licenses normally, but it would be a bummer if Reddit got to steal their code after all this bad behavior.

[jarym]

Agree, would be awful if Reddit themselves just decide to lift and reuse this!

[DANmode]

Just add them as a specific exception to whatever license you use, if that's your wish.

[sangnoir]

Why would Reddit add another backend layer?

[wsostt]

If they’re unhappy with their own API, this could provide an abstraction layer for the app. They rewrite their client to use this API and it frees up two teams to work (almost) independently. The UI team can work on their roadmap while the backend team fixes the internal API or retires the logic and implement it into this new layer.

I’m not saying they’ll do this or that it makes sense. But I’ve definitely done it in much smaller projects.

[kahnclusions]

Take these recommendations with a grain of salt and make sure you understand the implications of each license.

I wouldn’t add a license unless you specifically want to allow people to copy and use this code, otherwise just ensure that the appropriate copyright notice is present. No license is better than a badly written or badly chosen license — no license already means that all rights are reserved and no rights are given.

[alexb_]

GPL will ensure that the source is not used by any projects not affiliated with you who are trying to profit off of your work.

[ayende]

AGPL will do that, no GPL

GPL on server side software doesn't really matter, that is why the AGPL exists

[tyingq]

>GPL on server side software doesn't really matter

That's maybe too general. There are cases where it does matter.

Maybe "GPL on software-as-a-service code has limited usefulness"

Even then, people do sometimes choose it on purpose for SaaS, where they want to ensure any redistributed code, where the entity doing it makes that choice...is bound by the GPL.

[orta]

You probably want MIT

[andremedeiros]

Got it, thanks!

[bee_rider]

The advice in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256665 is more thorough, I wouldn’t just skip to this one.

[brettwilcox]

You may want to also check out Apache.

Here is a good comparison of licenses.

https://gist.github.com/nicolasdao/a7adda51f2f185e8d2700e157...

[cassianoleal]

This gist doesn't even mention AGPL which as other users mentioned is much more appropriate for server-side apps than GPL.