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For many individual developers and most companies, a permissive free software license like BSD may be a better choice than a restrictive one like GPL. Companie
by dgreensp 16y ago
For many individual developers and most companies, a permissive free software license like BSD may be a better choice than a restrictive one like GPL.
Companies like Google are releasing all sorts of code under BSD on the off chance it gets used, or maybe even improved, or maybe even becomes some sort of de facto standard. Releasing the code under GPL would mostly disincentivize these behaviors.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sedachv 16y agoThe point I'm trying to make is that you have to understand the trade-offs. Saying GPL automatically makes it harder for others to use your code is wrong. It depends on what you want and don't want to happen. This also completely ignores the LGPL. Many projects licensed under BSD would benefit from being re-licensed under the LGPL. There's also no reason why you can't dual-license a product, or license different parts of the same codebase under different licenses (for example, I release the unit test files in my Free Software projects into the public domain).