Ask HN: I need a license for an open source project allowing commercial reuse | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I need a license for an open source project allowing commercial reuse

10 pointsivankirigin19 comments

Tipjoy made http://tatatweet.com

You can get the source here: http://bit.ly/git_tatatweet

I'd like to fill up the license file with something more than:

  todo: insert business friendly license here :)

I'd like others to be able to copy the code and make money off of it. Any pointers?

An actual license file I can copy and paste would be helpful.

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I chose Apache. Thanks folks: http://github.com/ikirigin/tatatweet/blob/f310b2db75cfe0d507...

I'm not aware of any OSS license that doesn't allow others to copy the code and make money off it. even AGPLv3 (arguably the most restrictive license) allows it.

The problem is that the AGPL and GPL require you to let anyone who buys your software fork it or give it away for free. This is how CentOS is made.

And if you use a GPL or AGPL library, you have to license the whole software package as such.

This is not a problem for a webapp. Or is it ?

You may have to watch out because the GPLv3 is designed to prevent this sort of thing (having some GPL'd software inaccessible on the server side (the "application service provider" loophole)).

So it could be a problem, I'm not an expert on this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Vers...

*Edit, nothing to do with "Tivoization"

if it is AGPL (notice the A), then you must provide source to to your users, whereas with GPL it's when you distribute the code (can't send precompiled webapp)

The MIT license (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License ) and similar ones are pretty common choices. They more or less allow anything as long as attribution is provided.

As a consumer of open source libraries, my vote has to go for MIT. There's nothing wrong with Apache but I really appreciate the brevity of MIT and BSD licenses. I know brevity isn't all you should care about, but both licenses seem to have stood up fairly well over the years while being intuitive to understand. I'm no fan of custom licenses, even if their meaning seems crystal clear (like the WTFPL). Sure it's funny, but I'd rather have people using my code be able to use it with complete confidence and with minimal hassle from their legal department.

APACHE / BSD / MIT

A lot of work went into the Apache license, and it's definitely business friendly, allowing for reuse in proprietary projects. BSD and MIT are a bit simpler more straightforward. The two things that are nice about the Apache license are the contributors clause and the patent clause.

The old BSD license is not compatible with the GPL - I assume that if you are allowing proprietary re-use, you would also want to allow as much open source re-sure as possible.

When people say "BSD license" these days they usually mean the "modified BSD license" or "2/3-clause BSD license" that doesn't include the advertising clause, and as such is indeed compatible with the GPL. I don't think anyone of any notoriety actually uses the original, GPL-incompatible BSD license these days.

MPL is my personal favorite. Basically says you can use and modify the code in a whole bunch of ways, but if you release a version with changes you have to post the diff somewhere.

I really do like the simplicity, brevity, and complete freedom of use of the MIT license.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

Just replace <year> and <copyright holders> as appropriate.

You could go with BSD, it seems to be the standard for allowing other people to take your source and distribute it in a closed source product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses

also, can do like SQLite and just make it Public Domain.

This was more of a pain for SQLite than it was worth. It requires a lot more paperwork than just giving it a BSD (or similar) license.

In http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/dr-richa... he specifically says that if he knew more about copyright, he would have released under the Apache license.

That said, it's a warm fuzzy feeling to read "The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing: may you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give."

If you make it public domain, aren't you still liable (in the legal sense) for bugs or other issues?

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