How do I choose a licence

[Lawrence Rosen]

indeed there is too much choice, it seems. the good news is that it can

be reduced to 3 licenses.

 

That is an invalid conclusion. I encourage you to read the arguments on this
topic, here in the archives and in several other publications you'll see if
you search Google (and my website too!), before you rush to judgment about
such important issues as copyright and patent licenses. Put simply, Bruce
Perens has left out lots of important considerations when he narrows the
choices to 3 licenses.

 

That is not the first time that some people here have tried to categorize
the open source world into three or four neat buckets to suit some
preconception that we and the law have already evolved as far as we need go.
It's bullshit and it should be called out as such every time it is repeated.

 

For those who prefer simple answers, help yourself to Bruce's choices. For
those of you who have enough time and interest to be thinkers rather than
accolytes, and whose software is important and valuable, please do some more
research.

 

/Larry

 

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 

3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

Office: 707-485-1242    Cell: 707-478-8932

Apache Software Foundation, member and counsel (www.apache.org) 

Stanford University, Instructor in Law

Author, Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property
Law (Prentice Hall 2004)

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: dirk dierickx [mailto:dirk.dierickx at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 12:06 PM
To: Aaron Aichlmayr
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: How do I choose a licence

 

Bruce Perens had a nice article about this, you can read it at:

 

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3803101/Bruce-Perens-How-M
any-Open-Source-Licenses-Do-You-Need.htm

 

indeed there is too much choice, it seems. the good news is that it can

be reduced to 3 licenses.

 

On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 00:22 -0600, Aaron Aichlmayr wrote:

> With the plentitude of licences out there how do I choose the one that 

> is right for me? I am making a new php application and would like to 

> stick to an open source licence on the approved list but don't know half 

> of what I'm looking at.

-- 

dirk dierickx <dirk.dierickx at gmail.com>

 

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