[extropy-chat] Open Source Licensing - help!

[Dan Clemmensen]

Emlyn wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I thought some people here might know their open source stuff.
>
>I'm putting together a simple .net library for monitoring files for
>changes at the moment. I've written a bit about it at the bottom of
>the post, but it's really quite banal. The point of doing it for me is
>in learning how the open source world works, and the services
>available to its citizens.
>
>I was hoping to host it on SourceForge, but found that it's not just a
>matter of getting an account and throwing a project at it. You have to
>know all kinds of difficult detail such as the exact open source
>license conditions that you want to release the code under, detail
>about what the project is, etc etc. It appears that a human moderator
>then assesses your project for worthiness, before it is allowed on
>SourceForge.
>  
>
It's trivial to host on sourceforge:
see e.g.
   http://ttypatch.sourceforge.net/
This is tiny project that actually got to the code complete stage.

>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.
>  
>
>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.
>
>So does anyone have any advice?
>  
>
Release it under the GPL. Anyone who plays by the GPL rules will 
automatically
make your code, comments, and copyright notices available to other 
users, and will
not be otherwise constrained. If you do not use a GPL-compatible 
license, then your
code cannot be used by the biggest and most main-stream open source 
community,
and you fail to meet your "reputation" goal.   Also make it known that 
you will
license your code to anyone who contacts you, at no cost, under a 
license with an
"acknowledgment" similar to the original BSD license. This meets your other
goals.  Since you are the copyright holder, you are free to dual-license 
the code
in this fashion.