[extropy-chat] Open Source Licensing - help!

[Emlyn]

On 24/07/05, "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org> wrote:
> Emlyn writes, regarding open source:
> > Firstly, can anyone advise me on the open source licenses? What I'm
> > trying to achieve is to put useful code out there (give back to the
> > net!), and also to create the beginning of a reputation, or at least
> > to find out what it might take. So I'm happy for people to use my code
> > for commercial products without paying me any money, but I guess I
> > want some kind of acknowledgement.
> 
> The "standard" list of open source licenses is at
> <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.php>.
> 
> > What I'd like is to require users of the library to include some kind
> > of acknowledgement in their product, even just in a readme file, or
> > maybe show a logo for the library in an about box or something
> > similar. I'd like people to be able to use it in closed source,
> > commercial projects without the possibility of compromising their IP
> > (ie: I don't want to open-source infect them). Just the
> > acknowledgement. So far I've looked at GPL (no! too ideology bound,
> > and unusable by closed source people), LGPL (still a worry, I think
> > closed source people would still steer clear), and BSD (a bit too
> > open, I want some form of acknowledgement that the library is being
> > used in a product). As for derived works, I guess they need to be
> > bound to carry the same license conditions as the original library,
> > I'm not clear here.
> 
> The old BSD license used to have a requirement that any advertising for
> the product include a reference to the University of California.  It was
> considered very objectionable and in 1999 the UC officially rescinded
> that requirement, so it is no longer operative even for old BSD software.

The advertising clause looks far too objectionable, I agree. I'd
actually be happy to use an attribution creative commons license, but
creative commons seems not to get into the world of source code
licensing, and source forge list any CC licenses as options; does
anyone know the story behind this?

-- 
Emlyn

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