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159

answers:

3

I read all the licenses, and frankly I am kindda baffled by the many choices available. I know some relax the limitation of the license so that open source stuff can be used in commercial application.
But other than that why is there so many licenses out there? Is there any major difference between them. How do I go about choosing the right one for me?

To not make this too general and complicated I'll just throw in some licenses here and you guys can tell me what's the main point of each

  1. gpl (v2/v3)
  2. Apache license
  3. BSD license
  4. The MIT license
  5. The mozilla license

Edit: (Pointed out to me, by 3 people, no less) whether or not a license allows a user to use the software in a commercial software is covered in this question. But, as stated, I'm also looking if someone can shed light on the difference other than that. In context of choosing one for my own project rather than in the context of weather or not I can use the software within my own commercial software ( like I believe the other thread is about )

+1  A: 

This was asked 15 minutes ago

Eran Galperin
Not the same question
JonoW
+2  A: 

There is a nice rough overview here.

Ólafur Waage
+1  A: 

This is essentially a duplicate of this question.

How do you choose? Depends on what you, as a developer, want to retain as far as your rights go. It also depends upon the license, if any, of any libraries you may use. Those will often dictate what license you need to choose.

itsmatt