Open Source Licensing

James Pearson

aka xiong_chiamiov

http://changedmy.name/talk---licensing/

Table of Contents

Intro

Permissive

Copyleft

Other Licenses

Free Software? Open Source?

Open Source Initiative

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

Free Software Foundation

http://fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Permissive

"Take this code and use it for stuff."

Goal: maximizing freedom for other developers.

Common Permissive Licenses

BSD 3-Clause

MIT/X11

Apache 2.0

WTFPL

0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

Copyleft

"Take this code and use it for stuff, and allow others to do the same with the result."

Goal: maximizing freedom for users.

Common Copyleft Licenses

GPL

LGPL

AGPL

Common Misperceptions

Modifications made to GPL-licensed software must be made public.

I cannot sell my GPL-licensed application.

I cannot charge customers to download the source of my GPLed software.

If I license a web application under the GPL, I must share source with their users.

I've written an application Foo. I want to use the GPLed library Bar, but then I can't use Foo in proprietary application Baz!

Other Licenses

GFDL

FreeBSD Documentation License

Creative Commons

Other Concerns

Warranty

Patents

Tivoisation

Dual-Licensing

return talk