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The more restrictive your licensing, the less likely many developers are to use it now. Although I'd readily admit that applies to some industries more than ot

The more restrictive your licensing, the less likely many developers are to use it now. Although I'd readily admit that applies to some industries more than others. As an example, John Carmack (formerly of ID Software) recently posted this on twitter: GPL never did really do anything for game code, and I do wonder whether it was a fundamental cultural incompatibility. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/434005981379309568 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/434005981379309568 When I was merely a user of free software, I too believed as others did, that a more restrictive (or "stronger" if your prefer) copy-left license was better. However, the more years I've spent in the software industry, the more my opinion has varied. I think it ultimately comes down to who the primary "users" of your code are. If it's an application, it's probably ok to use more restrictive licensing. If it's a library, or code that's in any way intended to be reused by others more generally, the licensing should have very few restrictions if you want to encourage wide usage and to discourage others from duplicating the work.

shuzchen 13y ago
I really liked the criteria that http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html outlines regarding lgpl or not. It's the same criteria I use to decide whether to use a strong copyleft license or not: >The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library. >This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us. >However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline.
- binarycrusader 13y ago
  Sadly, LGPL is still too restrictive for many uses and for many companies anything GPL remains anathema. Public Domain or BSD-style licenses are really the best option for encouraging wide usage and discouraging code duplication.

shuzchen 13y ago

I really liked the criteria that http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html outlines regarding lgpl or not. It's the same criteria I use to decide whether to use a strong copyleft license or not: >The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library. >This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us. >However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline.

binarycrusader 13y ago
Sadly, LGPL is still too restrictive for many uses and for many companies anything GPL remains anathema. Public Domain or BSD-style licenses are really the best option for encouraging wide usage and discouraging code duplication.