BSD+1 License

Stefano Vincenzi s_vincenzi at lavabit.com
Tue Apr 6 03:48:15 UTC 2010


Josh Berkus ha scritto:

> 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.

The APL is too long and deals with clauses I'm not interested (per the  
wikipedia article).

>
>> 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

I don't think how innovative a project is has to do anything to the  
license chosed. It is also possible to distribute it using a dual  
"safe and established license" (ie: GPL) with a "new license that I  
understand". And since it will use established projects, I will have  
to use the original licenses ...or a compatible one.

And again, something that no one has yet mentioned is that the license  
will be in other languages... and probably used in countries that  
doesn't have precedents of open source licensing trials.





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