Picking a license

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Thu May 6 19:56:29 EDT 2010


aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:

> In article <4BE05D75.7030301 at msn.com>,
> Rouslan Korneychuk  <rouslank at msn.com> wrote:
> >
> >The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that
> >something I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or
> >something else?
>
> Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.

Yes.

Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that you'd
allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the freedoms you've
taken care to grant, then you should choose a copyleft license like the
GPL.

> Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people
> using your code should be forced to contribute back any changes

Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to do
anything is mistaken about copyright law, or the GPL, or both. The GPL
only grants permissions, like any other free software license.

-- 
 \      “If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly |
  `\      owned if it is not shared.” —Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney



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