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Comment by sinak | Hacker News Reader

So that license was suggested by someone at FSF and I ran with it because I don't know enough about licensing.

Can someone who does make a suggestion and I'll change it? We do use snippets in the code from other GPL/Apache licensed code in main.js for example, but we specify the sources and licenses for each snippet in the code.

My original thought was to use http://unlicense.org/. Would that work? Do I need any other language in there to clarify that the licenses of the snippets we use stand?

(Feel free to submit a pull-request with fixes)

Edit: Made an issue for this -> https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js/issues/31

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Don't use the Unlicense: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-....

>We do use snippets in the code from other GPL/Apache licensed code

If you include in your JavaScript code any code that is licensed under the GNU GPL you most likely have to release your code (the files with the GPL snippets) under the same -- at least that's an assumption you don't want to bet against. As for your other JavaScript code, the situation is less than clear and there's debate on the matter. See, e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/a/1239727/3142963 and read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Lin....

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

The first thing anyone should know about licensing is to ignore advices that says "use license X". The only exception is the advice to use known and established licenses.

Ask instead yourself under what conditions you would accept having your code used. Is it acceptable if a commercial company take the software, say Google or apple, using it in products and do major secret modifications and changes without contributing anything back? If no, AGPL is the license of choice.

If you are acceptable of that, do you want direct distributors of the software to contribute secret modifications? If no, use GPL.

Do you want companies to be able to take your code, distribute it and then try and take you out with patents? If no, use apache.

Else: MIT/BSD. For-profit companies prefer the lower end of the list because it gives them the most options in order to create revenue. As such, you might get more users if you can live with the consequences. In the end, only you can answer what you want the license to say.

use Apache or BSD or MIT. simple

This is the right answer. These licenses are all heavily vetted and can be safely used in almost any kind of project. The attribution requirements (when present) are straightforward and easy to resolve.

You don't want people to have to think or worry about anything before using this library. Because if they do they often won't bother. These licenses align with that philosophy.

I was about to post this myself. We don't want anyone to worry about "does this make me legally liable to open source my companies code..." or issues like that.

I'm a fan of open source, but you should stay focused on the issue of helping take down government surveillance, otherwise you won't make a dent in it.

What he said. For javascript, i'd use MIT and be done with it.

As a lawyer, i would tell a client never to use AGPLv3 javascript code on a website. The bounds of what it impacts are just way too unclear.

I don't see any GPL code in main.js - only MIT, and dual MIT/GPLv2.

What am I overlooking?

Someone from the FSF suggested the FSF's current license? There's a surprise!

> So that license was suggested by someone at FSF and I ran with it because I don't know enough about licensing.

Disclaimer: I care a lot about software licenses and have used pretty much every free software license around. If you can name a free software license, I've probably released some code under that license.

You can use the regular GPL and it will be fine here (it will not require anyone to release any code from the rest of their website).

If you use other GPL-licensed software in your project, you should use the GPL[0] for this project too.

Do not use the Unlicense - it's legally shaky (and not compliant with GPL-licensed software you incorporate).

[0] You can use the AGPLv3 if the GPL software is all GPLv3, but I would not recommend doing so.

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