If you do GPL, then anybody who uses your code in their commercial product will be required to redistribute their source, which most people do not want to do. If your code was in a library, then LGPL would be better so they wouldn't have to give away their code. If you plan to sell your app, perhaps a dual license GPL/proprietary would be better for you. If you pick BSD/MIT/Apache, then others can give away your code, sell it, do whatever they want, as long as they include your copyright notice. Apache license has some nice patent protection clauses. Look and see if there are similar open source apps to what yours does and see what license they use. I find that you should just go with the flow depending on what your code does. For example, Wordpress and Drupal plugins should be GPL, Apache modules should be Apache licensed, nginx modules should be BSD licensed, PHP extensions should be PHP licensed, and so on. When you choose your license, you are choosing your community. BSD licensed projects attract different people than GPL licensed projects... meaning, if it's GPL licensed, some big companies won't touch it with a ten foot pole, but BSD/Apache licensed projects can gain corporate interest. Look at MySQL (GPL), not many people contribute to it that aren't Oracle (Sun) employees. Personally, who cares? Based on my experience, most people will not care about your project. I would choose either BSD or Apache license. Give away the code. People might be more interested in helping out. Forks of your code that are sold are never as successful as the free core project. The core project has a name for itself, it has the contributors, it has the momentum. Not many (if any) forked projects could keep up with the core project. Best of luck, -Chris On 7/10/11 2:55 AM, Andrew Berg wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: RIPEMD160 > > Since most software licenses are incredibly verbose, I can't be bothered > to read through even the major OSI-approved licenses. Essentially, for > my new project, I don't mind if others use the code in a commercial > product, but I do mind if they do little more than repackage it and sell > it. Using it to extend functionality is fine; using it as major > functionality or as a major component is not. Commercial use is allowed > with little, if any, restriction (e.g. using it to produce videos that > will be sold is okay). Which license(s) should I take a look at? > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iQEcBAEBAwAGBQJOGVsKAAoJEPiOA0Bgp4/LbusIANTckI7UiUKGMG6Ai+XIWMjx > yM6UuQXW/gT21Rc0V5gb1NvonnHY2i9Ug9qaBdjhcRRGrNc32O7TG41xxdE8WhFi > wKo8istGkT4MIuNCgPgsHZnXl+BxpFZ6RMk5PAtLy5eEcJ8/q1aGxqyNK6SvA/Tl > 3PRqqvcB6+bv95iIFTAg9HnYN4NcfBwQrCM+UGGtTh/yCQZuTYAUP+MTaYgPjcdD > V/Oc1N3pLC07i2fMa66ySzXBICVxjMBfxWGutpcfeGWGfpJ1OMB4MsfaNE3z7Jzb > Ws/nfB9PZF5kM2OiCeIOGCE32obocnnLQmykxpXEgSvzUP2Uscx2wjN0+VsdQ14= > =d7Wo > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20110710/39ce5b15/attachment.html>