Which DUAL Licence should I choose.

Tzeng, Nigel H. Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu
Mon Aug 1 16:09:15 UTC 2011


My recommendation is to use the Creative Commons Attribution,
Non-Commercial, Share Alike 3.0 license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.de

While not an OSI approved open source license this is most likely the best
"well known" license that fits your needs.

Yes, there are folks that will tell you not to use a CC license for
software.  On the other hand neither the OSI nor FSF offers the same range
of licenses that the CC does and leaves you to on your own once you step
outside FOSS dogma.  Nor are most FOSS licenses as clear as the CC
licenses in what they mean in plain language.  CC used to have "plain
language" wrappers for FOSS licenses...maybe they still do but I don't
recall seeing them recently and I only saw ones for GPL 2 and BSD.

Given that GIMP has all of 2.5 dedicated developers and most FOSS projects
probably have about the same number of actual productive committers I
wouldn't worry over much over the community aspect for a project as
esoteric as yours.  A long time ago I used to code Rexx...and I learned
PL/I in college but I'm ah...middle aged...the odds of there being that
many hobbyists that would become prime contributors are slim anyway.  Use
a license that fits YOUR needs/desires since you're likely going to
continue to be the primary and likely only major contributor.

Also look for a contributor license agreement that makes sense for you.
As always, INAL and you need an IP lawyer, etc...but CC-BY-NC-SA is a good
starting point I think.

Nigel

On 7/30/11 6:56 AM, "TW" <zupftom at googlemail.com> wrote:

>2011/7/30 Thomas Schneider <Thomas.Schneider at thsitc.com>:
>>
>> My major reason for opening the source is, that you never know what's
>> happening in you own life.
>>
>
>Maybe you could authorize a Notar to put your software under a true
>Open Source license in case you can not maintain it any more, so
>others can then freely continue to work on it.  Until then, you could
>provide it under a non-free license (non-free in the sense of OSI and
>FSF).  This doesn't mean you have to keep your sources secret and
>don't allow anybody to contribute.  The question is whether such a
>model would be attractive enough to attract a community.
>
>Thomas W.




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