3 ms·
I'd argue that omitting such important differences like the differences between LGPLv3, GPLv3 and AGPLv3 is detrimental to the effort of making licensing "less
by sparkie 13y ago
I'd argue that omitting such important differences like the differences between LGPLv3, GPLv3 and AGPLv3 is detrimental to the effort of making licensing "less scary". Given the summaries for GPLv3 and AGPLv3 for example, somebody might think they have identical terms. The only additional information they give is a link to the license text (which is a terrible light grey font on white background). The original license text is what might be scary about licensing: because people struggle to read the legalese.
There needs to be a concise summary of how these licenses differ, one that they can comprehend without reading the whole license text. Website is a good idea, but IMO, needs a lot of work, and may even be harmful in it's current state.
I'm also not sure why they promote the GPLv2 (without + clause) over the GPLv3 either. That may convince someone that people will always share their code, and doesn't mention tivoization. Seems like a deliberate ploy from someone who dislikes the strong copyleft of GPLv3 family to prevent people using them.
I think an improvement would be to have multiple options and to filter down licenses until only a few remain: so eg, when I click "I care about sharing improvements" on the front page, it gives me another few options, like "I want people to share their modifications for hosted websites", or "I want people to be able to use in commercial apps" - which would filter to AGPL and LGPL respectively.