Re: Open Source license preferences

Hi,


> Was just wondering if others on this list used license types
> (permissive versus restrictive) as a criteria of what software they'd
> prefer to build and use on their systems.

It depends on what you want to do with it.

For example, most of the web framework type things post-Rails have been 
licensed under MIT-like terms. This is a simpler license than the GPL and, 
for situations in which a web framework is usually deployed, amounts to 
basically the same terms because the distribution clauses of the GPL never 
kick in.
However, I've seen various companies who deliver install-on-site software 
into the finance sector move from more traditional desktop based APIs such 
as WIN32 and Motif (yes!) to more web based UIs running in a browser. These 
firms would have to be careful using GPL licensed software in their web 
stack.

AGPL on the other hand is rather more difficult to work with in almost all 
situations because, AIUI, the share-alike clauses kick in when you write 
the code rather than when you distribute it. A strict interpretation would 
lead to implications for research-and-development-like activities and the 
requirements could be quite onerous for something that you may never end up 
distributing let alone commercialising or deploying to users.


I also tend to choose based on community norms. I work in ecosystems where 
the MIT license is the norm and so I try to license things under those 
terms where possible and stick to dependencies that are compatible with 
that.


I like the commercial aspects of the GPL guidance where it suggests to use 
it for a library that would be a market-first (my words) and that it's less 
crucial when it's some piece of functionality that's already widely 
provided by proprietary vendors.


In the past I used to prefer the GPL because of its stronger stance on the 
tit-for-tat relationship but experience and guidance from others has 
convinced me that the social and practical forces towards openness are 
quite strong in many situations anyway. For example, the expense and 
difficulty in permenantly maintaining your own fork so that you don't have 
to share your proprietary patches for a BSD codebase. Now I base my choices 
on a much wider range of criteria and am much happier releasing code under 
BSD style licenses into commercial situations. That's not to say it's 
always the best choice, it's just that there are a lot of other complicated 
factors to consider other than pure licensing.






Regards,
@ndy

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