4 ms·

What's wrong with the BSD license? It's essentially as permissible as it gets...

orra 5y ago
There’s nothing horribly wrong with BSD licenses if you’re wanting something permissive. But there are some minor drawbacks: * there isn’t a "the" BSD licence, but a family of similar licences * MIT is similar in spirit to BSD licences, but has the advantage of being more explicit[1], for example regarding sublicensing. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/217/what-are-the-essential-differences-between-the-bsd-and-mit-licences https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/217/what-are-... Finally, as a user, I prefer Apache over MIT because Apache makes patent rights explicit. [1] Being explicit isn't entirely academic. Cf. the historical stooshie about Pine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client)#Licensing_and_clones https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client)#Licensin...
- rdpintqogeogsaa 5y ago
  > Finally, as a user, I prefer Apache over MIT because Apache makes patent rights explicit. The thing is that you cannot really compare MIT and Apache-2.0 directly because they differ in several ways. It's not just MIT+patent clause. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Consult an attorney with experience in copyright law wrt software for legal advice. Some ways they differ: 1. The MIT license does not mention patents. Apache-2.0 is explicit about patents and has active defenses (patent litigation against the one granting the license leads to immediate termination of the granted patent rights). 2. You must ship the entire license in both cases, but the mode differs. The MIT license makes you include the copyright notice and permission notice. The Apache-2.0 license makes you ship the Apache-2.0 license text in any case; this does not include attribution in and of itself, which it only mandates for redistribution in source form. 3. If you modify Apache-2.0 software, you must make modified files carry "prominent notices" thating that you changed the files (in practice, this raises interesting questions regarding workflows centered around pull requests because PRs necessarily violate the license until merged). 4. MIT license only requires you to carry around the copyright notice and the license (unless the copyright notice refers to an external file, which you must then keep under the same filename because keeping the copyright notice intact is required; fiat-crypto is one of these incredibly creative projects that does this). Apache-2.0 requires you to always also ship a file if it is a "'NOTICE' text file", assuming this means a text file called "NOTICE", you have to ship an extra file, to which you may add your own copyright notices therein. 5. No implied trademark rights on Apache-2.0. The MIT license does not make any effort to talk about trademarks (thus implied trademark licenses, like with implied patent licenses, might be possible); Apache-2.0 does not grant any trademark rights except for the NOTICE file. If you want something closer to MIT+patent clause, try the Blue Oak Model License.
  - orra 5y ago
    > 3. If you modify Apache-2.0 software, you must make modified files carry "prominent notices" thating that you changed the files (in practice, this raises interesting questions regarding workflows centered around pull requests because PRs necessarily violate the license until merged). Yeah, having to do this on each individual file is an unnecessary burden. Edit: It seems, for example, gratuitous to insert a copyright line for yourself, if your patch is only a couple lines long.
da_chicken 5y ago
MIT explicitly permits merging, publishing, sublicensing, and selling. BSD isn't explicit about it. BSD 2, 3, and 4 aren't explicit about that. Some people (e.g., lawyers) care about licenses being explicit rather than relying on implicit phrases like "any purpose" which sound rock solid but can still technically be argued about in court.

orra 5y ago

There’s nothing horribly wrong with BSD licenses if you’re wanting something permissive. But there are some minor drawbacks: * there isn’t a "the" BSD licence, but a family of similar licences * MIT is similar in spirit to BSD licences, but has the advantage of being more explicit[1], for example regarding sublicensing. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/217/what-are-the-essential-differences-between-the-bsd-and-mit-licences https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/217/what-are-... Finally, as a user, I prefer Apache over MIT because Apache makes patent rights explicit. [1] Being explicit isn't entirely academic. Cf. the historical stooshie about Pine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client)#Licensing_and_clones https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client)#Licensin...

rdpintqogeogsaa 5y ago
> Finally, as a user, I prefer Apache over MIT because Apache makes patent rights explicit. The thing is that you cannot really compare MIT and Apache-2.0 directly because they differ in several ways. It's not just MIT+patent clause. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Consult an attorney with experience in copyright law wrt software for legal advice. Some ways they differ: 1. The MIT license does not mention patents. Apache-2.0 is explicit about patents and has active defenses (patent litigation against the one granting the license leads to immediate termination of the granted patent rights). 2. You must ship the entire license in both cases, but the mode differs. The MIT license makes you include the copyright notice and permission notice. The Apache-2.0 license makes you ship the Apache-2.0 license text in any case; this does not include attribution in and of itself, which it only mandates for redistribution in source form. 3. If you modify Apache-2.0 software, you must make modified files carry "prominent notices" thating that you changed the files (in practice, this raises interesting questions regarding workflows centered around pull requests because PRs necessarily violate the license until merged). 4. MIT license only requires you to carry around the copyright notice and the license (unless the copyright notice refers to an external file, which you must then keep under the same filename because keeping the copyright notice intact is required; fiat-crypto is one of these incredibly creative projects that does this). Apache-2.0 requires you to always also ship a file if it is a "'NOTICE' text file", assuming this means a text file called "NOTICE", you have to ship an extra file, to which you may add your own copyright notices therein. 5. No implied trademark rights on Apache-2.0. The MIT license does not make any effort to talk about trademarks (thus implied trademark licenses, like with implied patent licenses, might be possible); Apache-2.0 does not grant any trademark rights except for the NOTICE file. If you want something closer to MIT+patent clause, try the Blue Oak Model License.
- orra 5y ago
  > 3. If you modify Apache-2.0 software, you must make modified files carry "prominent notices" thating that you changed the files (in practice, this raises interesting questions regarding workflows centered around pull requests because PRs necessarily violate the license until merged). Yeah, having to do this on each individual file is an unnecessary burden. Edit: It seems, for example, gratuitous to insert a copyright line for yourself, if your patch is only a couple lines long.

da_chicken 5y ago

MIT explicitly permits merging, publishing, sublicensing, and selling. BSD isn't explicit about it. BSD 2, 3, and 4 aren't explicit about that. Some people (e.g., lawyers) care about licenses being explicit rather than relying on implicit phrases like "any purpose" which sound rock solid but can still technically be argued about in court.