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Re:Simple description of popular open source licenses by anonymoushn on Saturday April 30, 2011 @06:36PM (#2501759)
WTFPL and other similar licenses seem to belong with the MIT license, but they're just floating off on their own.
Re:Simple description of popular open source licenses by sudont on Saturday April 30, 2011 @07:13PM (#2501838)
Agreed. Flowcharts also assume that there is some sort of decision hierarchy that will be followed. Who's to say that derivative works are the most important thing here? Maybe some company/person needs to cover their ass in another way first.

This list is less a description and more a taxonomy, which means that it's not valuable to anyone new to these licenses. When starting a project, it's best to convey the benefits of each license in a straightforward manner to whoever the decision maker is. A tree like this will only confuse and ensure that an ill-fitting license is chosen from the onset.

Simple, written definitions are therefore best, and are similar to the article here: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL

Re:Simple description of popular open source licenses by scythe on Saturday April 30, 2011 @10:15PM (#2502133)
This would matter if there were more than 12 licenses. As it stands, it takes less than a minute to look at every possibility on the chart.
Re:Simple description of popular open source licenses by beza1e1 on Sunday May 01, 2011 @03:52AM (#2502640)
Well, the chart does not include much. For example, i found the ISC licence now. It seems to be equivalent to MIT, but has simpler text.

http://www.isc.org/software/license