How to choose an open source license for an app?

Question

For creative-commons licensing (not good for code) there is this page http://creativecommons.org/license/ which can be used to assist in choosing a license is there something like this for GPL/BSD/APACHE/ect?

Answer 1

Not as far as I know, but then, choosing a GPLv{2,3} or BSD license can become somewhat of a religion. I assume you are familiar with the pretty complete list here http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical. What complicates matters is that though the difference between the GPL and BSD licenses is actually pretty clear, the differences between the dozens of other licenses is a bit less evident. To say the least.

Choosing between GPL and BSD is mainly a matter of in howfar you are willing to accept people using your code in their products and making the code closed (common criticism of GPL-people against BSD) or other people not being able to make money using your code at all (common criticism (but a misunderstanding) of BSD-people against GPL). (IANAL, of course; well, not quite anyway...)

If you find a place used to make a choice, I would be more than interested in knowing about it!

Edit: thinking about this, I've come to realize that setting up such a website would be a cool, but extremely difficult thing to do. CC has only so many licenses, but the OSI knows dozens. Each is distinct in it's own little way; very subtle differences exists, but also vast gaps between different licenses. And even though I went to law school (and ended up working in IT :D), I would have trouble creating a question-and-answer scheme by which to pick a license.

And even if one could find the time and had the expertise to write the code and understand the licenses in detail, then still there would be a problem. Here's were the religion-like aspect of open source licenses kicks in. Everybody is biased in this world. Personally, I lean a little towards GPLv3, but two of my colleagues are pretty fanatical in their support for BSD. One of my former professors is a BSD-guy too, but I'm aware of some prominent professors at other universities to support the GPL.

And then, if you manage to venture beyond technical knowledge, basic legal understanding of the licenses and religion, there's interpretation. I've read many piecese about (mainly) BSD and GPL in which many different interpretations were expressed. True, this can be due to ignorance or plain stupidity (did I admit I'm biased myself?), but it can also be due to different legal opinions. I remember a discussion I once had with my professor about BSD vs. GPL in which we both expressed opinions which could both (I think) be legally valid, but from which followed very different consequences from using a certain license.

An interesting, but complicated matter.

Answer 2

If you don't care who copies your code and makes money out of it then BSD is the simplest.

If you are not too fussed how its used but want to retain ownership then perl's Artisitic license is for you. (LGPL also works for this).

If you envisage your code being accepted by apache.org one day then go for Apache.

If you want to retain ownership and some sort of control over the usage of your code (and you want a license that will stand up in a court of law) then full GPL 2.0 or 3.0 is for you. Be careful to license any config files, runtime libraries and example programs with LPGL otherwise its difficult for developers to use them as intended.

Answer 3

IANAL, but here's how I understand the most popular licenses:

• GPL: It's open source and stays that way. If you use any part of the code, bundle, or even refer to the code (even if the the code remains untouched) with another project, your project must be GPL and the source needs to be easily accessible.
• LGPL: Same as GPL, but you are free to link/refer to my code, without being forced to any specific license.
• MIT / BSD / Apache 2.0: Do what you want with my code, as long as you give us credit, and try not to associate yourself with us.
• CDDL: If you make changes to the code, you have to give those changes back to the community. Otherwise similar to above.

Answer 4

Most of what I write (and publish) are libraries and I generally choose an MIT/X11 style license (essentially "here's the code, use it as you want"), so not far off from a BSD license.

I have released a few libraries and apps using a GPL license, specifically because I do not want them used in closed source.

FSF used to have a "license chooser", but I can't seem to find it now.

Answer 5

I found this to be quite useful. It's a neat interactive tool that lets you examine the basic properties of most popular open source licenses and compare them to a commercial "all rights reserved" license. Includes links to said licenses. http://three.org/openart/license_chooser/

Answer 6

I just ran across this article which might be useful to you:

HOWTO: Pick an open source license (part 1)

HOWTO: Pick an open source license (part 2)

I also found two sections from the book, "Producing Open Source Software" which might be helpful:

Choosing a License and Applying It

Chapter 9. Licenses, Copyrights, and Patents