Ask HN: what's the best guide to code licenses you've come across? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: what's the best guide to code licenses you've come across?

3 pointsstevejalim7 comments

I've got a working grasp of open-source code licences, but I'm determined to get my head more fully around them, so that I can be 100% confident about the side-effects of using open-source projects with a given licence.

I want to end up with a good, working grasp of GPL (incl versions), AGPL, BSD, MIT and as many other [relatively] common setups as I can, and be able to explain them quickly and correctly to others. To get me on the road to that, it'd be great to get a few pointers to good/trusted sources of knowledge that are relatively easily graspable.

I am not a lawyer, and I am busy making things, so summaries/grids/lookup tables are particularly welcome. :o)

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I've found Jeff Atwood's article on the topic to be the most useful selector of when what license is appropriate: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license-any-...

good one, missing only one important license: CDDL

By far the best work on this subject has been written by Lawrence Rosen in his book "Open Source Licensing":

http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm

Free to read online - or buy a hardcopy.

Unlike less useful works, Rosen actually provides a model for thinking about open source models. Even if you only care about commercial software licensing, this this information in this book will be valuable.

Don't forget MPL2 at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/

it's very easy:

GPL: nobody can distribute your software as a closed-source system. Nobody can also link your software with non-opensource ones.

BSD, MIT, Apache: anyone is allowed to do anything with your code, provided that reference to your name is preserved.

If you code an open-source product, but it's intended for enterprise integration with lots of non-opensource components, go for a non-GPL licence, like MIT.

In most other cases, GPL is everything you need.

For non-software products that you want to share, use Creative Commons licenses.

For non-software products that you want to share, use Creative Commons licenses.

That selection in itself isn't easy, which is probaby why they have a page dedicated to that decision: http://creativecommons.org/choose/

of course, every such decision needs research and reading. Nothing is easy :)

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