Ask HN: I need a non-cryptic open source software license | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I need a non-cryptic open source software license

2 pointsdarxius5 comments

I'm searching for a software license that will allow any kind of derivative work only if it is released under the same license and only if attribution is given to the author (me).

I'm sure a license like this exists, however the cryptic nature of the majority of the licenses really turn me off and make it very hard for me to understand exactly what people can do with my code.

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Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

* Allowed to remix (create derivative works)

* Allowed to share (copy and distribute the work)

* Share alike (distribution must be under the same license)

* Attribution is required

CC says you shouldn't release any code or software under their license.

  http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category
  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

I believe you want an MIT license.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT

The MIT license doesn't require that derivative works also be released under the same license; you need a copyleft license for that kind of requirement.

You know, the boilerplate I used for MIT was a copyleft derivative and I never really glanced at the original.

http://snk.tuxfamily.org/log/copyleft-mit-license.html

contains the license I've used, but, is not the source where I grabbed the text. I should re-evaluate that. Thanks for the reminder.

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