[ILUG] BSD vs GPL licenses

[paul at clubi.ie]

On Tue, 5 Apr 2011, David Pintor wrote:

> Any thoughts appreciated.

The right licence depends on the goals of the licensor.

E.g. if they're aiming for universal adoption of some reference code, 
then perhaps BSD or LGPL is the right answer.

If they're concerned that the code should remain free, even as its 
extended, then the GPL is probably the better answer.

If they want to make money on the side by charging for licences for 
proprietary, commercial use, then the BSD definitely doesn't do. 
You'd want the GPL (specifically, the most restrictive form of it - 
GPLv3).

However, many licensors pick BSD or GPL simply according to which 
crowd they tend to hang with.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma  paul at jakma.org  twitter: @pjakma  PGP: 64A2FF6A
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