How do you choose an open-source license? [closed]

Answer 1

There are lots described here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses

The decision of which one to use can be political, but should ultimately be determined by your plans/desires for the software. If you want to ensure it is always free then choose GPL or another "Copyleft" license. If you don't mind some commercial use, choose another one that's compatible with that.

Answer 2

I almost always end up usign MIT or BSD (they're equivalent), since it

1. Is the most liberal license out there. It just says you're not responsible for any kind of trouble, and optionally forces people to include a copyright notice of your original work in derivatives.
2. It allows closed source derivatives, which is something I see as a good thing: companies sometimes don't have the possibility to do their work under the GPL (they may themselves use products or components from a third party with restricted licenses).

That, and the GNU/GPL bunch are generally extremists when you encounter them in the wild.

Answer 3

More pragmatic reasons can also influence your choice of license - if you want to use a GPL library, you must use GPL yourself, or if you intend your software to be part of a larger project then you need to look at their requirements.

Answer 4

You could always just use the best one of all, the WTFPL. I use this on most of my school projects since they aren't that great anyways.

Answer 5

I'm slightly surprised to see no mention of the Open Source Initiative as a source of information about which open source licences exist. It probably doesn't do the comparisons, so the other sites are also worth checking.

Answer 6

I've recently begun investigating the type of licensing to apply to a rather substantial piece of work. The number of choices and the content, restrictions (or not) and limitations of all the open-source licenses is bewildering. I've found a couple good links in the answers posted, but I didn't see anything pointing to the Open Source Initiative's alphabetical list of licenses, so I've included it here.