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So you're someone who clearly has spent a bit of time thinking through all the licenses, and has a good philosophical position on them. However, if you haven't
by pbiggar 13y ago
So you're someone who clearly has spent a bit of time thinking through all the licenses, and has a good philosophical position on them. However, if you haven't done all that research, and just need a license right now, I think it's not wise to tell people to use the GPL, as it will have side-effects they don't intend, for features they're not interested in (perhaps, not interested in _yet_, of course).
- ianstallings 13y agoThis is a big decision. What is so bad about taking an hour or two to read about the differences? I know a lot about the different licenses because I went through this same decision when I decided to release a library I built under LGPL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensmtp-net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensmtp-net/ I spent a little time and made a decision. I think everyone should do the same. Don't let someone embrace and extend your work unless you want them to.
- pbiggar 13y agoAn hour or two is a serious underestimate. I spent literally years reading about licenses before I came to my eventual conclusion.
- ianstallings 13y agoSo you're saying that a quick decision can't be made? I agree. A couple of hours is the bare minimum to at least try to discover them. But I still think people should try and understand the differences. I feel that the GPL is very important to OSS.
- pbiggar 13y agoTotally agree, I just wouldn't want someone to have to have more friction when they're trying to do OSS for the first time.
- pseut 13y agoProbably true. I'd bet it's also unlikely that someone so new to free software will attract many collaborators. So they'll be likely to own the copyright anyway (for at least the vast majority of the project) and can relicense it later. But, yes, if they're hell bent on not learning about the differences between the licenses, they probably don't want the GPL.
- steveklabnik 13y agoThat's a big probably. I could just as easily say that people would probably be surprised that someone could not contribute back. After all, it's sharing code!
- pbiggar 13y agoI think I don't know what you mean? Why wouldn't someone be able to contribute back?
- steveklabnik 13y agoSorry, I meant "weren't required to contribute back."
- pbiggar 13y agoAh. I've never had a problem in practice. My personal view is that I should optimize for people getting involved. If it gets so successful that a company wants to use it without contributing back, its a nice problem to have (and it doesn't particularly bother me). I know you have a lot more in OSS than I. Has this affected you much? Would love to hear any experiences - it seems you're sour on it and there might be a story there?
- steveklabnik 13y agoI'm planning on writing a blog post, but the tl;dr is that I'm not sure it's sustainable, because there's a whole lot of take, and very little give.