Help Selecting License

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Alex,

On Jul 23, 2004, at 1:46 PM, Alex Rousskov wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Fabian Bastin wrote:
>
>> An interesting starting point (at my opinion) is the Licensing
>> Howto, written by Eris S. Raymond:
>> http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/Licensing%2DHOWTO.html
>
> IMHO, it would be nice if that useful document was linked from the OSI
> web site (as work in progress, I guess).

My opinion as well!  Except, I would love to see several such licensing 
guides (I think a few people on this list have written them), as I 
think the licensing page would benefit by a plethora of such resources.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

That way, there's a variety of perspectives, to minimize the risk of 
bias

> Note that the document currently does not seem to cover Public Domain
> designations (which, IMHO, should be the first consideration when
> deciding on legal basis for software).

That would also be a useful, though I think different discussion: 
whether and how to release software in the Public Domain, which 
(despite various efforts) I feel is a conceptually trickier thing that 
mere licensing.

Any opensource.org webmasters like to comment on the propriety of such 
a tool?  If nothing else, I think it would help cut down on traffic to 
this list....

-- Ernie P. 
(who's tickled that he managed to use the word 'plethora' in a serious 
email :-)