Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Interesting article on OSS licensing

(1/1)

Lashiec:
Now that the software developing world, and OSS in particular, is in a turmoil thanks to the the imminent release of the GPLv3, I thought it would be a good idea to share this article I discovered time ago, but I forgot to post about. His author, byuu, is a skilled programmer, famous for his contributions to the romhacking scene (including his tough but delightful work in the hacking part of Der Langrisser) and his accurate SNES emulator, bsnes, which its license choice prompted him to write this article, where he share thoughts about the two major OSS licenses, BSD and GPL, the freedom that the two give both to the original programmer and those who want to use the code for their own works, the community behind them, and how the compromises you have to made choosing one or other inclined him to use a custom license to accommodate his needs and ideas on the subject.

Interesting article on OSS licensing
via Richard Bannister

mouser:
Nice long read.. good find  :up:

housetier:
It's a nice longe article, whih tries to avoid flamebait; of course it's misleading:


* nobody has to select the gpl fo their code

* authors still keep their copyrights
A license cannot break copyright. If I put something I wrote under gpl, I can still put the same code under a different license. Nowhere do I give up the rights I get from copyright law.

The only "problem" that could arise is when the author of a gpl'd published code no longer wants his or her code under gpl. OTOH that code might no longer be under their control, since both side accepted the license...

Yes the whole topic is complicated. But you cannot lose your copyrights, you an lose (sell) many other rights, but your work will always be your work.

Eóin:
That was a nice read, indeed the OSS licensing world is a minefield of extremist ideologies.

Navigation

[0] Message Index