License selection for free software

[Paul Boddie]

On 7 Mai, 19:48, vivai... at gmail.com (Ville M. Vainio) wrote:
> Paul Boddie <p... at boddie.org.uk> writes:
> > original licence as well. Now, I did leave a fair amount of
> > information about the heritage of the code, so that anyone who is
> > scared of the LGPL could just go and get the original work, but that
>
> I doubt anyone is really afraid of LGPL. The only problem with LGPL is
> that of static vs. dynamic linking, and that is only a problem in
> platforms without dynamic linker (rarity these days).

The wxWindows, erm, wxWidgets people seemed to be worried enough to
neuter the licence, making the result a somewhat bizarre creation.

> > You can almost never just "grab the code from somewhere without having
> > to think about [the] license" since even permissive licences typically
> > have a list of conditions that must be observed. Certainly, they
>
> Yeah, but you don't have to "worry" about license - just have the
> license text in source code, or a text file in binary distribution.

Yes, but you are still having to think about the licence: if it were
public domain code (and provably so, opening up another discussion
entirely) then you wouldn't need to think twice about doing whatever
you wanted with the code. I accept that with the GPL, you're obliged
to think about what you're going to need to do with the source, but in
licences like the modified BSD licence, the FreeBSD licence or the X11
licence, that text file in the binary distribution is quite possibly
something that some people might overlook.

There are other things that could trip people up, of course: non-
endorsement clauses, required notices of modifications, patent
retaliation clauses, and so on. All these do feature in permissive
licences.

Paul