Picking a license

[Paul Boddie]

On 14 Mai, 21:18, Ed Keith <e_... at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The GPL is fine when all parties concern understand what source code is
> and what to do with it. But when you add people like my father to the loop
> if gets very ugly very fast.

Sure, and when I'm not otherwise being accused of pushing one
apparently rather unpopular man's agenda, I am interested in knowing
what the best practices should be and how they can be followed more
widely.

Although Bill Gates once apparently claimed that no-one needs the
source code for their word processor or office suite, there are still
benefits in people like your father having access to the sources, even
if this obviously means that he isn't going to recompile it himself:
he can get others to fix things, particularly if his favourite version
is no longer widely supported; if you were from a part of the planet
where you were comfortable with a widely-spoken "global" language but
your father could only converse in a less widely-spoken "minority"
language not generally supported by such software, someone (perhaps
you) could undertake the task of translating that software.

Whether or not one is comfortable with copyleft-style licences, there
clearly is a benefit in providing access to software governed by those
licences. Being able to do so responsibly is obviously a prerequisite
to feeling comfortable about it.

Paul