[Ilugc] need suggestion - which open source license is best suited?
- From: steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx (steve)
- Date: Sun Feb 7 16:25:28 2010
Hi Balachandar,
Ideally, you should consult a lawyer to take a look over the licenses, if this
is a serious (for example, commercial) undertaking.
Furthermore, the validity of Open source copyright licenses have not (AFAIK)
been tested or questioned in India.
(Kenneth or anyone who is aware of legal issues in India: would you care to
comment on the validity of OSS licenses in India ?)
That said, here is my opinion ...
On 02/07/2010 01:34 PM, balachandar muruganantham wrote:
Hi,
I am working on a project for which i intended to release the source code.
Here are the things i want people can do with my project / code
1. they can take my project source code and build their own, re-brand them
and release it with credits to my project.
2. they can take my project source code and enhance and should contribute
back to the project
3. they can take my project source code and enhance and can sell the
features they additionally built.
You have only mentioned what the recipients of your code /can/ do, not what
they
/should/ do. There's a big difference there. Even code in the public domain
(that is without a license), provides all the above liberties.
What about the option of taking your code and building an application on top of
it ? Should they be obligated to release their application too under the same
license ? If yes, consider the GPL.
OTOH, if you are ok with them using your code to build a closed/proprietary
application on top of it as long as they are obligated to only release any
possible changes they made to your code, consider the LGPL.
If you are ok with them using your code to build a closed/proprietary
application on top of it without any obligation to release *any* code (either
your's or theirs) under an OSS license, consider a BSD style license.
You mentioned the ability of users to re-brand and re-release but would
re-branding be a requirement (for instance in case of being re-released
commercially) ? If yes, consider basing your license on the Mozilla Public
License.
In the end, it also depends on the specifics of the project (for example, if
your code can be included in a web application framework, what would you
consider as releasing ? deployment or usage ?
Well, now that I've confused you enough :) here are some that might further
help
(confuse :) ):
http://pgl.yoyo.org/lqr/
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/licenses_summary.html
http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm ;(look at chapter 10).
cheers,
- steve
--
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