License Proliferation

[Simon Phipps]

On Sep 2, 2005, at 12:56, Robin 'Roblimo' Miller wrote:

> Another possibilbility: Offer a list of "most popular" licenses. 
> SourceForge.net could supply this data in multiple forms, if asked. 
> You can already get a good sense of license popularity by going to - 
> http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=14 - but it 
> might be more useful, and fairer to newer licenses, to show not only 
> all-time popularity but also licenses chosen by newer projects over 
> the last 30/90/365 days. This would also make trends in licensing 
> apparent, which is useful data both individual and corporate open 
> source developers should have in hand before they make licensing 
> decisions.

That's an interesting idea, but I'd suggest that simply using "number 
of projects that use the license" as the criterion is not the best 
approach - it simply shows what's trendy. The test of a license is 
surely how many people are willing to participate in the project that's 
licensed under it, both as developers and as deployers.

S.