BSD+1 License

[Josh Berkus]

Ciao Stefano,

> I have tought about it, and it is more like this: if you make a
> commercial distribution, share alike. What I want is a copyleft license
> that isn't as long as the GPL... but I guess it will be better to read
> and analyse the GPL before making that.

First of all, if people are distributing the work non-commercially, why
would they care if they make source code available or not?  You're
adding a condition which has no purpose; only commercial distributors
care about copyleft requirements.

Four degrees of licenses - BSD/MIT, APL/MPL, GPL, and AGPL -- pretty
much define the whole spectrum of "completely free" to "copyleft".  Any
new license hairsplitting you seek to define is essentially pointless.

> I listened the video, and honestly don't know how it is relevant to a
> BSD license with an extra clause that adds copyleft (without using GPL).

The point is, strange unfamiliar licenses discourage adoption (Method
#3)  I don't know what your OSS project is, but I highly doubt whatever
you're doing is so original and innovative that people will be willing
to buck the company lawyers to have it.  Nothing *I've* ever done ha
been.  You're just setting yourself up for a failed project.

Pick a well-established license which people, especially company
laywers, are familiar with.  Unless you are a bored licensing attorney,
there is no point in writing your own license.

--Josh Berkus