For all you programmers and artists out there - what license(s) do you use, and why?
Personally I always put my work in the Public Domain.
Companies rarely pass savings to their customers. They prefer to keep their prices high and increase profit margin, instead of cutting prices due to smaller development cost.Public Domain:
Hopefully a big company like Windows or Mac will use your work (meaning a cheaper/better OS for end-customers)
GPL, apple and microsoft shall not touch my work
I had to do it.
I've used MIT, Apache, and GPL in the past. I prefer GPL but I will contribute to any project worthwhile on the license their original authors have chosen without any issue.
Proud GNU/Linux zealot and lover of penguins
"Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history." --Richard Stallman
you know Red Hat is a fortune 500 company, right?
and IBM?
you would be correct in stating that the business model for Free Software isn't exactly the same as Microsoft's model, but it's certainly viable.
Keep in mind also that Linus Torvalds is a multi millionaire.
Last edited by Penguin Guy; June 26th, 2010 at 11:32 AM.
What GPL does differently from other less restrictive FOSS licenses is that it discourages forks. If a company takes a project and spins it off without contributing back (i.e. non-GPL license) then community improvements would have to be merged back at the expense of the company, or not at all. A smart company will find a business model that works under those restrictions and use them to its advantage.
At my previous job we used a fork of Apache 1.3.26 as a basis for one of our products. You don't want to know what a security scanner would do with that... What this meant was a constant backporting effort which would consume a huge amount of resources. It took us five years to migrate to Apache 2, and all we had added was a custom access module!
At my current job, I am managing a product which is basically based off a major FOSS project. This time around, we do contribute back. I will actually be seeking managerial approval to open our resources (build farm, test farm, etc.) to all contributors. It's not FOSS zealotry, but pure business sense. With a proper CI framework in place, commits won't be pushed upstream unless they pass all automation tests. This way, we can focus on the parts that are important to us, and the community can do whatever they feel is important to them, but working on the same trunk and constantly testing it would ensure that we won't be stepping on each other's toes. It's a win-win.
Unfortunately, most companies can't just use GPL FOSS as-is because, with a few notable exceptions, it's not tailored for enterprise needs. If they have to add their own IP to make it work for them but have to share it with everyone else, it can easily be seen as a poor business strategy.
What if someday login in your facebook account you're required to accept yet-another-update license agreement saying you're a total idiot? Quit Facebook, join Diaspora*
my webcomics ~ my diasp*
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