[Wellington-pm] Meeting Tonight

[Daniel Pittman]

Dan Horne <dan.horne at redbone.co.nz> writes:
> On 14 July 2010 13:46, Andrew Chilton  wrote:
>
>> Just one note I thought I'd ask about is that in the LICENSE file it's under
>> the GPLv1 or later or the Artistic license. Ignoring the arguments about
>> whether to dual license, wouldn't it be worth upgrading to at least GPLv2 if
>> not GPLv3. Appreciating the fact that we can do that ourselves is already
>> allowed, I would have still thought putting it out under a newer than GPLv1
>> license would make more sense for you :)
>
> I know it sounds bad, but I don't really know the difference between the
> various Open Source licenses, and I glaze over when people try to explain
> them to me, so I'm happy to use whatever people think best. So do I still
> want the Dual License or just one of the GPL ones? Is 2 or 3 better?

For my opinion on this:

Answer one question for yourself:

    What do I want other people to be able to do with this code?

If the answer is "free stuff, but only if they give back their changes" then
use the GPL for the code.  It requires that, strongly, and prevents people
locking up the code in their application without the application also being
free.

(...or the Artistic/GPL1 combination, which is more or less the same.)


If the answer is "cool stuff, and it would be nice to get back changes" then
use the two clause BSD license.  It allows commercial use without giving
anything back, by giving their lawyers a license they well understand, but
encourages returning source by being an open license.


Finally, if the answer is "I don't even wanna care" then use the WTFPL or
something similar, which is as close to "free" in every sense as you can get
around the world.[1]

> Alas, I'll need to change the copyright in each package. I know Dist::Zilla
> is supposed to be able to help out with automatically adding licenses to
> files, but I haven't had time to look into it.

You will probably find it pleasantly quick and easy to get started with, and
I find that it does make it easy to include boilerplate like the license text
in a well documented way.

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  This may not protect you from legal liability for the failure of your
     software, while the more restrictive earlier license choices do.

-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel at rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
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