Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 12, 2:19 am, Lie Ryan <lie.1... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/12/10 06:50, Patrick Maupin wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p... at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> >> On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>  The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in
> >>> some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the
> >>> chocolate.
>
> >> If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
> >> it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
> >> accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
> >> me to share chocolate with my friends"?
>
> > But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of
> > my friends.  He's not even making me share my special peanut butter
> > and chocolate.  What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter
> > and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend
> > promise to share.  I try not to impose obligations like that on my
> > friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my
> > friend!
>
> The analogy breaks here; unlike chocolate, the value of software/source
> code, if shared, doesn't decrease (in fact, many software increases its
> value when shared liberally, e.g. p2p apps).

Absolutely true. Actually, the analogy was really pretty broken to
start with.  It wasn't my analogy -- I was just trying to play
along :-)

> There might be certain cases where the software contains some trade
> secret whose value decreases the more people knows about it; but sharing
> does not decrease the value of the software, at least not directly, it
> is the value of the secret that decreases because of the sharing.

Sure.  But in general, people will share, often even when doing so is
legally questionable.  Just look at the RIAA's woes if you don't
believe me.  The only real question here is whether the marginal value
achieved by adding constraints to force people to share (which most
would have done anyway) outweighs the costs to people who, for
whatever reason (perhaps a trade secret obligation) *can't* share.

The answer to that question may well vary depending on several
factors.  The fact that GPL and Apache and MIT and BSD are available
is a good thing -- whichever license an author feels best fits his
project is definitely the one he should use.

Regards,
Pat