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I thinking of a good opensource licence to choose for my project. I got a few requirements but I have a hard time choosing a license because a read some different things about some of them.
The project is a Java project that can calculate decompression schemes for scuba diving. I want this project to be opensource because a wrong decompression scheme can be lethal. Therefore feedback on the algorithms and source code is important for me. I don't make my own algorithms but I use various opensource algorithms that I implement in 1 Java library.
My requirements are:
I and other contributers to the project don't want to be responsible for wrong calculated decompression schemes due to bugs in the code, miss use of the code or any other way that resulted in wrong decompression schemes.
The library should be able to use on a website I plan to build without the need to publish the server side code of the website.
It's not allowed to make any profit of the library itself. Even not even the library is changed and republished. However I don't mind if people sell programs the make use of the library.
If people change the code than they should be forced to re publish the library with an opensource licence (Optional requirement).
I hope someone with a bit more knowledge of licenses can help me out.
Well, there are a couple of things I notice right off the bat here.
First off, you talk about needing to be able to do things with your own code. If you are the copyright holder, you can do pretty much anything you damn well please with your own code. The license is for other people, not for you.
Also, disclaiming any responsibility for what the code may do to other folks is pretty much boilerplate with any license.
That being said, I've found in my work I can get by with the use of only 3 different kinds of licenses, depending on my needs.
Full on GPL
Benifits:
Nobody can ever take any of the code propreitary (without coming to me for a relicense). They can still use it and charge people, but since they'd have to license the result GPL, that wouldn't be particularly practical. The reason is that any of their users could give away all the free copies they like.
The sources are avilable for anybody to contribute to, so I might not have to find and fix every damn bug and write every new feature myself.
Drawbacks:
None of the code is usable in a properitary app
I use this typically for stand-alone apps.
GPL with linking exceptions
This is basically what it says; GPL with an exception that meerly linking against (or #including) the code does not render the entire result GPL. Here's an example from the Classpath library.
Benifits:
Nobody can ever take the code itself proprietary.
The code can be used in a proprietary product without making the whole closed-source product open-source. Only the GPL-licensed stuff has to stay GPL.
Drawbacks:
The facility itself can never be expanded into a proprietary facility. Generally a plus in my book, but it does deter some people from using it.
I use this typically for helper facilities and API's .
Public Domain
This means anyone can do anything they like with this code, including making a tiny tweak, slapping their own copyright on it and calling it theirs.
Benifits:
Anybody can feel free to use it however they like.
Drawbacks:
No protection from the code getting "stolen" by a proprietary software seller.
Impossible to do in may jurisdictions (a permissive BSD I understand can be a good alternative there).
I use this when I'm publishing something incomplete that I really want someone else to take over, or when publishing something that is supposed to be a reference implementation for a standard library.
Now in a case like yours what I would do is either:
Use GPL with the linking exceptions for the library. That will allow everyone (including you) to use the library in a proprietary application, but the library itself will always stay Free.
Use GPL, and insist that contributions from others have their copyrights assigned back to you. This allows you full rights to make your own proprietary app using other people's contributions, and doesn't allow anyone else (including those contributors) that same right. Kinda cheesy in my book, and will probably discourage outside contributors. However, only the most successful Free Software projects get any outside contributors anyway. So it may not be that much of a loss.
It came to my attention recently that Bruce Perens (one of the founders of OSI) actually made a blog post a year earlier that made the exact same point. He picked two different licenses than I did for the latter two though. He picked LGPL for the intermediate license, which I think is a mistake on his part. However, he picked the Apache License 2.0 for the latter license, and I think he may have a point on that one. The benefit you get from using Apache over straight Public Domain is that you are better protected from patent lawsuits. That isn't something poor little me really has to worry about, but your company is a different matter entirely.
This impossible. You say you want an open source license that prohibits making money. However, one of the key requirements for being an open source license is not making any restrictions with respect to commercialization.
Ergo, a license like you describe it cannot possibly exist.
And here the standard answer: StackOverflow is a site for programming questions. We are programmers. Your question is a legal question. This means that all answers (including mine) will be, by definition, crap, since we don't know WTF we're talking about.
For legal questions, ask a lawyer.
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I have a program I wrote and I have been encouraged by folks to release it into public.
What would be the best way to go about it? Just dump it on a public site and hope for the best?
How much criticism will come (on the standards, decisions made etc...) and how best to prepare for that. I have been the sole developer for this app for about two years.
And how much difference does the license (GPL, MIT etc...) practically make?
Any experiences?
A license is a good idea, even if you don't care what people do with the code - most of the time people will happily take code "as is" and if it doesn't do what they want they will just throw it away - but you never know when some idiot might try to sue you because they burned their mouth drinking a hot coffee while reading your code. You may also wish to restrict usage (derivative works etc) where someone else makes profit out of your hard work. Fron the other side of the fence, people who might take and use your product/code like to know where they stand with regard to use/copying/distribution. By asking that your name stays on the code, you can also ensure that you get vcredit for the work, and that any improvements/suggestions that happen in the wild can make their way back to you.
If you just want to give away the code wihtout much ongoing development, then a great place is CodeProject - you can release the application and write a small article describing it, and then it's up to you to decide if/when you will post updates.
If you want other people to collaborate then there are plenty of open-source websites that will support this approach.
As for criticism, you are likely to get a few mails from people who need tech support, or who want to suggest extra features. Most people are very polite though. If you wrote the program for yourself, there is a good chance that when it gets into the wild you will discover all the bits that have to be used in a particular way to work well, and all the additional options that you don't care about but which the product needs to make it applicable to a wider audience - you can get sucked into a lot of support work if you're not careful. Ultimately don't be afraid to say "no" to someone if they ask for something you don't want to support - it's your program and your time after all.
The main thing is to have fun :-)
Using a well-known, well-tested open-source license will make it easier for your users to know where they stand with regard to your code. The worst thing you can do is release your code without a license. No license means no use, since in most jurisdictions software is automatically copyrighted with no right of use or reuse.
If you don't want the project to wither away from lack of interest, you'll need to get it in front of developers. Releasing it at a large open source project site (such as SourceForge, GitHub, or Google Code) will help you get that visibility, and will provide a lot of infrastructure for managing your project. The more you do, the better the chances that others will find it, try it, and use it.
CodeProject is a good suggestion- but it really depends on the platform. Typically users of each major development platform flock to other sites for their Open Source extensions or apps. For example, lots of developers on the Microsoft stack look for things in the Visual Studio Gallery or on CodePlex. SourgeForge obviously has its own religious following as well. I would suggest promoting your new app on a site where you would go to find something like it. The Google page rank of whatever public site you use to host it will also impact how many people find it and ultimately how much criticism (constructive or otherwise) you get on the project. Licensing is always a good plan. It has been my experience that each major open source collaboration site tends to learn towards a specific licensing mechanism, so I would just do what seems to be the most popular if you don't have any specific requirements.
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I know this is a general question, but I'd like to hear other people's opinion about our case:
I work in a small company. Our main development tool is PowerBuilder, which is a very limited IDE with a shrinking community. We've created some tools, which we use internally to solve a certain needs. They have neither been properly designed nor properly tested, and are not in production quality. OTOH, they do save us quite some time, and might help others as well. I'm sure other companies have the same kind of tools, and was wondering how common a practice is it to share them with others. As I see it -
The pros:
Good karma
More attention to our website
Perhaps getting fixes and improvements from others
The cons:
Without investing more development, the tools might make us look bad
Publishing of the code requires some effort
Some of the tools might be too specialized for our needs
The whole effort might go unnoticed given the shrinking community
Have you or your company ever contributed such tools, or used such tools developed by others? Is it worth the effort?
EDIT:
For those how wondered, the tools I had in mind include -
A tool that makes using SourceSafe easier, by listing objects that are checked out to the current user or others, backing up checked-out objects, and reconstructing PBGs.
A tool that recognizes PB controls at runtime, like Spy++ does (requires some infrastructure at the target app).
PBNI wrapper for SQLite (in-process access, no ODBC).
An SQL client, text measurement tool etc.
"Open source" originally meant you published a tool, and you made the source available. Because of some projects that expected, and in some cases through licenses demanded that changes to the source code be resubmitted for sharing, "open source" now quite often adds the concept of collaborative development to the mix. I did (or attempt to do) the latter; allow me to share.
There are magnitudes of difference between the effort associated with source available and collaborative development open source.
Leadership: You need to tell people the who, what, where, when, why and how of changes. And very possibly, you'll need to diplomatically poke and prod your volunteers. You may need to define the vision and prioritize goals of the project, and then enforce them when someone tries to take things another way. And, unless you only want people to come across your tool through serendipity, you'll have to advertise, running that very thin line (even thinner on the Internet) between attention-getting and gaudy. If the project is going to implement the concept of meritocracy, as many open source proponents say should happen, then someone will have to judge people's accomplishments and dole out the rights and responsibilities appropriately.
Work flow: I haven't done an exhaustive search by any stretch of the imagination, but I have yet to see a collaborative development platform that did all the things I needed. Part of the point of open source collaborative development is that the quantity involved in code review will cover any potential issues in quality of code submissions; I haven't seen a free tool integrated into a collaborative development platform that helped manage that cleanly yet (e.g. counting code reviews; auto-promoting after x reviews). We had to handle that, hacking manual methods into the existing tools. Probably at some point you'll have to define a version and create a build. Then there's the grunt tasks like documentation. (Ever try to release a new version of something free without release notes? The furor!! grin)
PB-specific issues: PowerBuilder is a commercial tool, and while there are cheap versions available, there are not free versions. The DRM added to PB11 has probably reduced or eliminated piracy that developers were probably doing to take copies of their office PB home, and while PB11 and later have a dual license policy that would allow developers to take home a copy legally (with permission and cooperation of the original license owners to create a second license), I don't see a lot doing it. (No scientific study, that's just what I see.) That cuts down a lot of potential collaboration, even from enthusiasts. Issues of compatibility of code between versions of PowerBuilder, plus the fact that very few people will own every version, will limit again your list of potential contributors.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see more collaborative development open source in the PowerBuilder community. I'd love to know how to work out the issues myself, and I have an effort in the works to see if I can make a new model work. (My first effort to follow the popular model failed miserably, IMHO.)
Is there a reason to feel badly about firing a ZIP file up to the web and forgetting it? I don't know. Is there any more pride or embarrassment in a 4 year old ZIP file as opposed to a SourceForge project whose last contribution 3 1/2 years ago was a post "Where the heck is everyone?" There is a reason why Sybase CodeXchange devolved from a collaborative development platform to a source available platform: next to no one was using the collaborative development features. If you source available open source your code, you'll have plenty of company.
BTW, CodeXchange may be an answer to your concern about visibility to the PowerBuilder community, although you'll lose the web site traffic. The PowerBuilder Web Ring is another, significantly less effective, method to help your visibility that keeps traffic on your web site, but it demands a navigation bar on the target page on your site. CodeXchange may also be a way to get over your concerns about code quality and narrowness of purpose of what you have to share. grin
What should you do? Don't underestimate the effort with a collaborative development sharing, but don't let it stop you from a source available sharing.
Good luck,
Terry.
You can probably discount one of your cons: Anyone interested enough in this kind of tool to be evaluating your offering is unlikely to be writing Company X are teh suxors on your feedback form; rather if they find some deficiency in what you have put out there, you are likely to get helpful bug reports or even patches.
If you can get your company to buy off on contributing to the community then I would go for it. it is always worth the effort to give back a little bit and this would definitely be a good way to get some of your tools out to the public and improved upon by the community.
As far as the cons go, I wouldn't worry too much about the criticism, it can only help you guys improve the next product you deliver and people will respect you from learning from your mistakes, nobody is perfect.
Even if your effort goes unnoticed by your shrinking community, future employees and clients will see that you are contributing outside of the company and may help with your reputation with them.
I think the pros far outweigh the cons on this one.
In short: go for it. I doubt there's little to lose, but much to gain.
The pros:
**Good karma*
never a bad thing to have.
**More attention to our website*
possibly a con if your code is really bad :)
**Perhaps getting fixes and improvements from others*
this is possibly the best thing you get from open-sourcing your code. Its all about sharing and helping each other, you get to use other's code, they get to use yours and everyone's gained from the trade.
The cons:
**Without investing more development, the tools might make us look bad*
I'd search through to remove dodgy/rude/stupid comments, tidy up the formatting etc.
**Publishing of the code requires some effort*
requires barely any effort - set up an account in Sourceforge, create a SVN repo there and import your code. Then create a binary package (a zip file will do) and release it using the website. Might take you an hour, if you stop to read all the documentation.
**Some of the tools might be too specialized for our needs*
You could set the whole lot up as a group - eg PowerBuilder Tools, then people who see the really specialised tools won't have wasted their time getting them, they'll still have the 'more readily useful' tools.
**The whole effort might go unnoticed given the shrinking community*
Possibly, but then there's really no reason not to release the code. If you don't it may get completely lost to everyone when/if you change development tools.
Publishing your source is a great way to get feedback. If you look bad because of it, that's ok. Just be willing to fix the problem. If you want help with your improvements I can't think of a better way than asking for help.
By the way, plenty of open source projects can be credited with the growth of communities that were previously shrinking.
I think you've done a good job of identifying the pros and cons. And it's probably true that the pros will outweigh the cons. If no one likes the utilities and does nothing to or with them, then you've lost nothing really; bad code shouldn't scare experienced developers (most experienced developers, especially PB ones, have seen their share of legacy code). If even one person benefits, then you get the karma, eh?
If you proceed to submit your tools to the open source community, do as you have here, and admit up front that the tools are not polished. This may deter some from even looking at them, however, if they are at least functional and can be easily modified, then they still represent a head-start for any prospective beneficiaries. As a PB user myself, I would be curious to know more about free tools that can give us an edge in productivity.
Have you looked into Sybase CodeExchange? They have some open-source PB things there, including the PowerBuilder Foundation Class framework.
I just saw your response to my question - amazing that you have developed something similiar already. :-)
Regarding your question: the company I work for has a specific section on the web site where tools which we used internally and/or simple solutions (or code snippets) which customers frequently ask for are published. The license of these offerings is very liberal as well, I think it qualifies as open source.
In your particular case, I'm fairly interested in the Spy++-like application you talked about since I was looking for (and/or trying to develop) something like that myself.
I'm aiming for something which doesn't require any infrastructure in the target application, but so far I'd be happy to play with anything which works, even if it requires modifications to the applications. I'm just not familiar enough with the PowerBuilder API yet to make a judgement on whether this is possible without modifiying the target application.
As I mentioned, I already developed similiar Spy-like applications for ordinary Windows applications as well as managed code applications (which require interaction with the VM to query the state of the object tree), so my hope is that I'll be able to find a solution which does not require any target infrastructure.
Do you have the source code up somewhere already? It doesn't need to be compileable, I'd just be happy to look how you did it in principle so that I can (hopefully) derive something from it which solves my particular problem. In case you didn't upload the source code yet, maybe you can provide some email address which I can use to contact you privately? I tried looking for something on your profile, but so far - no luck. :-)
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The company I'm working for is facing some difficulties and our future is, let's say, uncertain. Over the last years, we have developed a framework to build community apps and social networks. We believe that this initiative should not be totally lost, and that it may be useful for the community, so we decided to open source it.
I have some questions regarding this process:
How to choose the most suitable license knowing that the original authors could still contribute and/or do some consulting ?
What are the necessary modifications we have to do in the codebase ?
Do you have some pointers to some existing docs / books which would cover this wide topic ?
I know that those questions are quite open and that there is no simple answer, but I would like to hear from some people with similar experiences.
Thanks in advance !
For the license, you have to ask what your goals are for the license. Is your goal to build a community of people who contribute code back, and not let anyone else create a proprietary fork of your code? Then the GPL would be a good license to choose. Is your goal to allow you to retain copyright, distribute it as open source, but offer an alternative license for people who want to link it to proprietary software? Again, the GPL might be a good choice, though in this case you'll need to make sure you set up copyright assignments from any other contributors that send changes back to you so that you can re-license their contributions.
It sounds like your code might be server-side software, in which case you may want to look into the AGPL; the AGPL is like the GPL, but also requires people to distribute the source to changes if they run it on their own server (which the GPL doesn't require, as it only ever requires anything when you distribute it).
If you want people to be able to build off of it while writing proprietary software, but still contribue changes back to your software itself, the LGPL is pretty good. If you don't care about proprietary forks, and want something that's simply permissive, then the MIT license is a good choice.
The only modifications that are necessary are those that remove any code you are not legally able to release. If you own the copyright on all of the code, then it should be all good, but be careful of any cryptographic code, and talk to a lawyer if there is any in your program. Export restrictions can be a pain to deal with, though they do have provisions that make the process simpler for open source software.
Beyond the necessary modifications, it is good to make sure your code is easy to build and run on as many systems as possible. For instance, you should check which of your dependencies are required, and which ones can be made optional. Some good documentation on how to build and install your software is also good, as well as all the usual things you want in any software development (not just open source), like an easy to build system, unit and regression tests, etc.
A few other things to think about are:
How will other people get their changes to you? Patches on a mailing list? Patches attached to bug reports? Forks on GitHub?
What revision control system will you use? I generally advocate for a distributed revision control system like Git or Mercurial, but Subversion is also very popular and should do the job.
Make sure you make it obvious how the community is supposed to work; a web page describing how to get the software and how to contribute, pointers to your mailing list or IRC channel or whatever medium you want it to be discussed on. If you are going to have a core group of committers or something, document how the process of choosing committers works.
I could go on listing more and details, but I'd probably be repeating things that have already been said. If you want more information, I'd recommend reading Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel.
If you're looking for ways to incorporate the open sourcing of this software into a strategy to make money for your company, Joel Spolsky's take is one of the most clearheaded I've read.
If you only read one book on the subject of open source licenses, then it would be hard to do better than Open Source Licensing by Lawrence Rosen.
We've done the same process last weeks. We choose Mercurial as version control system, which works like a charm. Bitbucket is a hosting company, which provides Open source projects with free hosting. You also need more documentation, because people from outside the world will hopefully join your project - this is something different from explaining things to your collegue next door.
One important thing is also that you have to keep in mind, that you now have an audience which you dont want to annoy. With internal development you often change your API, the database schema or something like that. With open source you have to keep in mind, that there should be compatibility between minor versions and clear migration paths if necessary.
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I work at a company where the rule basically is (as I understand it) that you cannot use any code unless (a) you write the code yourself or (b) there is some explicit indemnification clause guarding your use of any other code (like open source code). I am finding this making my coding difficult.
For example, coding samples in books are pretty much use "as-is". Microsoft SDK Code Samples are use "as-is". Blog posts about coding are use "as-is". There are several sites out there with code samples (including SO) that are use at your own risk. No warranties implied or indemnification against intellectual property lawsuits, blah, blah, etc.
Basically, I'm confined to using Asp.Net and the .Net Framework and nothing else and to bar my eyes from accidentally picking something up that I haven't created (ok...that may be my anal interpretation of the rule ;-).
I find this difficult because a big part of learning to code I think is reading other code. Reading blogs that have code, reading books that have code, looking at coding samples, using code from SDK samples etc. Also, I would think it is safe to use code that people have shown to be a good solution or pattern for something and freely put up for others to use. I'm not about to think that I can code everything myself. I definitely have to stand on the coding shoulders of others to reach certain heights.
It could be that I don't understand licensing very well either. From the companie's perspective (I suppose) they don't want to incur any risk of beind sued for IP infringement.
My thought is that you have to weigh risks. Taking a coding snippet from a book is low risk. Incorporating code from an open source library could be high-risk. I say make decisions based on how much risk you are willing to take.
Has anybody had experience working in a situation like this or similar to this? Is this a rare thing or is it common in some sectors? Are there others in the same position like me out there?
Any insight or guidance would be appreciated! Thanks!
Edit:
Thanks for the responses! To clear up some things: I'm not advocating stealing code. I'm talking about code that has some kind of public license that allows it to be used in its defined legal way. The key is there is no indemnification in public licenses in using the code. That means it you use it at your own legal risk (and other risk). If someone sues an open source project that you used code from, you could be roped into the lawsuit as well because you are using the code even though it had a public license.
In 2005, Microsoft was using indemnification to compete against open source venders by promising it's partners that Microsoft would protect them against IP lawsuits. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jun05/06-22PartnerIndemnificationPR.mspx
So, even if the risk of being sued for IP infringement may be extremely low, it is a non-zero probability. Thus, I can't use any of it. Even if it has a public license of some sort. :-(
The "risk of beind sued for IP infringement" isn't really the right way to think about it. This isn't a "risk" thing.
Either
You have a license and can use the source. There's no risk. You have the license. There can't be a lawsuit.
Or
You don't have a license and you're in violation. Effectively, you will be sued. There's no risk here, either. You're in violation of someone's copyrights (or worse).
Companies are averse to Open Source for a variety of strange reasons. Risk of lawsuit is not one of them.
Things I've heard.
What if it has a virus?
What if it doesn't work as advertised?
What if it "crashes" something? Who do we sue?
None of these are "risk" items. They're "due diligence" items. And mostly, they're easy to address: pick products with enough users that someone else vets the code before you; QA open source as if one of your own people typed it in. Except for one.
This leads us to the real reason. [Hint: It's not "risk of lawsuit".]
There's no one to sue when you didn't perform due diligence on open source.
Most shops don't have real solid configuration management or QA policies (the kind that would stand up in court as best practices). Until they have these things in place, they don't dare think about introducing open source for which you really need solid QA and configuration management.
I think what your company is really worried about is you directly copying large segments of code for which there may be licensing issues, presenting a legal problem to the company if they are caught using it. However, you may read blogs or other non-licensed code and discover a solution which works for the particular problem you are working on. In that case, you would be better off rewriting the code (that is, look at the solution and reproduce it) as opposed to just copying the code and making modifications to it. At my company, that is what they generally recommend for using non-proprietary code.
As well, for small amounts of code (e.g. a standard implementation of a cache) where everyone implements this the same way, every time, your company is unlikely to be afraid of using outside code, as long as you are sure to test it carefully.
By "indemnification", I assume they mean assurance that the code is free of copyright or patent or maybe trade secret encumbrance that they don't know about up front, or that somebody's willing to compensate them if something like that turns up. I've never been in a company that worried about this, nor have I heard of one before.
It's not clear what you actually want here, other than sympathy (and I do have sympathy for people trapped in corporate foolishness). It sounds like the policy is quite rigid, if you're worried about sample code in books. This is a bad policy, and will hinder you, but I don't know what you can do about it. Unlike Joel's blog post on getting things done as a grunt, it sounds like you can't just start doing thing intelligently without being in clear violation of corporate policy.
Not knowing your situation, my suggestion would be to look for another job. This one will definitely stifle your professional growth, and a company with that policy is unlikely to be reasonable about it.
(It would be nice if you could assure them there was no danger, but that's not true. People have lied about copyrights, although open source projects tend not to, and only a fool would claim definitely that a large chunk of code did not infringe on any patents in the US; even if it was written a year before software patents were first awarded, that would be merely good grounds for a court fight, rather than avoiding a court fight. GPLed software is actually better than BSD software, since it requires some patent licensing downstream, but it can't deal with third-party patents. Of course, if they're that worried about being sued, writing in-house software is no solution. That can infringe on patents.)
You could rename the variables and how would they find out? Do they check every line of code ? Universities tell you that all the time, not to copy code without referencing. Why don't you try coding something and useing parts of code you find in the Internet?
Generally you will use more from communities like stack overflow or blogs than from open source projects.
Finally since the code has no warranties, its at your own risk.. well the is the same case if you came up with the code by yourself: its at your own risk.
Hope that helps... and good luck.
It could be that I don't understand licensing very well either. From the companie's perspective (I suppose) they don't want to incur any risk of beind sued for IP infringement.
My thought is that you have to weigh risks. Taking a coding snippet from a book is low risk. Incorporating code from an open source library could be high-risk. I say make decisions based on how much risk you are willing to take.
I'm not sure if I understood correctly. If you are saying that license infringement is fine when you don't get caught, I will have to disagree with you.
You can learn by reading code without breaking laws or getting fired. Just don't copy the code to your company's code base if the license doesn't allow it.
If you're not aware of the "clean room" concept, then there's always that approach. Have a friend look at some open source code and get them to tell you how they think it works. Diagram it out, and then code it yourself.
If it worked for IBM, right?
Keep in mind that not all Open Source is GPL. Your company can copy as much BSD-licensed code as they like. BSD-licensed code has made it into OS X (that's probably my biggest understatement of today) and to a lesser extent Windows NT.
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I'm a software engineer, not a lawyer, and my university doesn't offer any courses geared toward licensing software. In fact, their law-related courses are lacking (but slowly growing in number). Where can I go to learn about open-source licenses and how to choose them?
There are lots described here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
The decision of which one to use can be political, but should ultimately be determined by your plans/desires for the software. If you want to ensure it is always free then choose GPL or another "Copyleft" license. If you don't mind some commercial use, choose another one that's compatible with that.
I almost always end up usign MIT or BSD (they're equivalent), since it
Is the most liberal license out there. It just says you're not responsible for any kind of trouble, and optionally forces people to include a copyright notice of your original work in derivatives.
It allows closed source derivatives, which is something I see as a good thing: companies sometimes don't have the possibility to do their work under the GPL (they may themselves use products or components from a third party with restricted licenses).
That, and the GNU/GPL bunch are generally extremists when you encounter them in the wild.
This can create endless discussion, but there is one tenet I would hold to whenever deciding what license to use: DON'T CREATE A NEW ONE!!
No matter how persuasive your legal guy's arguments that, because no current license exactly meets your project's unique needs, you should write your own, or even just "slightly modify" an existing one, treat him like a programmer coming to you arguing that he just HAS to use a GOTO statement because nothing else in the language will work.
Other advice:
Choose one which has major usage (see http://freshmeat.net/stats/#license)
See David A. Wheeler's discussion of why to choose a license compatible with the GPL - http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html.
If you are looking for information regarding free and open source licenses a useful comparison chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licences
You could always just use the best one of all, the WTFPL. I use this on most of my school projects since they aren't that great anyways.
Wikipedia, of course, has basically all the information you would ever need to know. But the hard part is to know where to start. I'd recommend starting off by reading about the Apache License and the GNU GPL, which are two popular sides to the same story, each offering different freedoms to the people associated with the code.
But here it is in a nutshell: Apache License lets anyone do anything with your code, including taking it and using it in a closed source product. It gives whoever is taking the code the freedom to do what they want with it.
The GNU GPL, on the other hand, allows your code only to be used in a project that is also distributed under the GPL. In this case you might write some code and prevent a proprietary company from using your work. Here, you're giving freedom to the code itself that it will always be used for "free" purposes.
I'm slightly surprised to see no mention of the Open Source Initiative as a source of information about which open source licences exist. It probably doesn't do the comparisons, so the other sites are also worth checking.
More pragmatic reasons can also influence your choice of license - if you want to use a GPL library, you must use GPL yourself, or if you intend your software to be part of a larger project then you need to look at their requirements.
I've recently begun investigating the type of licensing to apply to a rather substantial piece of work. The number of choices and the content, restrictions (or not) and limitations of all the open-source licenses is bewildering. I've found a couple good links in the answers posted, but I didn't see anything pointing to the Open Source Initiative's alphabetical list of licenses, so I've included it here.
We had a similar dilemma. At our company we decided invest lots of time on a framework, with the eventual hope of releasing it to the open source community. The business is built using open source tools (apache, php, etc.), it was time to give back. We decided on an LGPL/MPL dual license. That way, we could incorporate fixes/improvements from the community, while still protecting applications (particularly ours) running on top of it from being forced to go open source as well.