You present a number of licence choices but I think what you really need to consider is who you believe your potential competitors are. Are they (small) consul

You present a number of licence choices but I think what you really need to consider is who you believe your potential competitors are. Are they (small) consultants / consultanties who are likely to install your system for other to use and either provide feedback for environments you don't / won't have access to; or provide patches. Or are they companies like Google / IBM / Oracle. If the later you should always choose a copyleft licence like AGPL. Why? Well all those companies, when they have the chance to release Free Software pick BSD / MIT style licences; because all of them have the engineering resources to fork something and take it in-house and improve on it AND continue to pay the 'stupid tax'. But if look at something like the Linux kernel, which is GPL'd, all of them have had to contribute back. You should pick the licence that makes things easiest for you. Each comes with its own set of communities; I know people who will not contribute to GPL projects, whereas others never contribute to BSD / MIT projects. Plenty of organisations make money from GPL software (e.g. Redhat) and plenty do from MIT (but I can't think of any atm - late night, wine, etc.) Summary: Pick what is right for you, and ignore nay-sayers. You will have customers - if the product is good - no matter the licence.