[melbourne-pug] OS license requirements

[Ben Finney]

Mike Dewhirst <miked at dewhirst.com.au> writes:

> I'm getting near to open sourcing a Django project and have to choose
> an appropriate license. Can anyone help me choose?

Thank you for working to release the software under free terms.

> I have settled on the following requirements ...
>
> 1. Project source must be freely available for end users to view and
> download and modify and further distribute to others

These are essential to free software.

> 2. But if user modified source is distributed the modified source must
> be freely available for others to view and download and modify and be
> subject to the identical license as the project source

This makes the license a “copyleft”: the recipient is free to
redistribute only under terms with all the same freedoms.

> 3. However, if the user modified source is kept in-house and not
> further distributed the changed source may be kept private or offered
> back to the project as a patch at the whim of that user.

Fine. It's not at all clear copyright even applies to modifications if
they're not redistributed to others; you can assume this is permitted in
any free software license.

> 4. Project (and user modified) source may be combined with proprietary
> software but the project (or user mofified) source component remains
> subject to the same license.

As you describe this, it is an oxymoron. Complying with the terms above
makes the work free, not proprietary. A free work distributed under
non-free terms (“proprietary”) is not free.

So I don't understand what it is you want with this. Either you want to
require redistributino under free terms, or you want further
restrictions to be allowed. Which?

> I'm leaning towards the LGPL but would appreciate feedback from anyone
> with contrary views.

Based on your stated requirements, I would advice you to license the
work under “GNU GPL version 3 or later”, but you'll need to clarify what
appear to be incompatible constraints.

-- 
 \        “Don't fight forces, use them.” —Richard Buckminster Fuller, |
  `\                                                   _Shelter_, 1932 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney