What will a "license" for LT then include?

The Kickstarter says that it might get you access to a packaged build, and that the price might be pay-what-you-want -- sounds a lot like the NeoOffice business model ( https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/mirrors.php?file=NeoOff... ).

But making money from open source projects is hard enough, and varied enough, that it makes sense to spend a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with this one before committing to anything. It looks like that's what they're doing. So I don't think there will be a firm answer to this until they're much closer to launch -- or that it would be a good idea to offer one.

If LightTable wants to be the 'Eclipse' of clojure and Python then it needs to be open source.

Mass adoption, patches, test cases, design, feedback and money comes only when it reaches crazy adoption and a lot of people hack on it.

That is why it is important for LightTable to release a minimal usable version ASAP and then improve it in further releases.

All this needs a open source set up. A Cathedral set up earlier but a bazaar set up later.

Indeed, I'm very curious about this one as well.

Going for YC is clearly a great starting point for building a scalable business, so I wonder what the business logic will look like. As in genuinely, positively interested to know. :-)

Please consider a BSD-style license. There are lots of people that can't or won't use GPL-licensed projects.

Alternatively, will you be releasing under a commercial license?

There are people who can't or won't use GPL code in their own projects our use GPL libraries, but I've never heard of anyone not using a program (rather than the code) because of a GPL license.

For a project like this, the GPL makes the most sense: an IDE needs people who use it and people who contribute to the core project much more than it needs people who use its code in proprietary projects of their own.

Eventually every successful IDE becomes extensible. Up to that point GPL is perfectly fine.

As soon as IDE provides extensibility one starts having problems with GPL and it's viral nature with linking.

GPL is forcing IDE into a "sandbox" where the whole distro must be GPL-compatible at the point of distribution. The workaround is often with the expense of user experience where one has to separately install extensions just because of licesnsing.

The Mozilla Public License v2 is a good compromise, as it is less aggressive than the GPL on links (it operates at the file level)

Ugh, please avoid the GPL. Go for Apache or BSD or something more free.

Like someone stated, it's a dev tool that will not likely need to be bundled with your end product. I use Emacs, which is also GPL, as do other people, with no hinderance from a license point of view.

If I were doing Light Table, I'd use GPL too - It also does not preclude someone from writing their own plugins and selling them as an add-on. I would assume there will be a way for easy/seamless plugin installation into the main program.

It's a standalone piece of software, not a library. How does it being GPL affect you?

Well, for one, you can't make small modifications to the code and then resell it as a commercial product with the original author's copyrights tucked away in an about box. You'd actually have to release the source code too. It will be harder to convince customers you've added value if they can see exactly what you've changed.

I have to know: Was this is an ironic statement?

No one is taking it as one, but poe's law aside I'm convinced they are wrong.

"It will be harder to convince customers you've added value if they can see exactly what you've changed."

I don't get it... is your added value simply an illusion?

If they can see what you've changed the code, they should be able to see why and how you added value.

We have some ideas on how we'll facilitate that. There will definitely be ways for people to sell plugins they create and or for large companies to keep them closed source.

Grandparent was being sarcastic:

It will be harder to convince customers you've added value if they can see exactly what you've changed.

Is this sarcastic, or did you just now realize the point of the GPL?

In the long term, the GPL kills the major incentive to improve the software's design and feature set, even though small improvements and ports may be made.

Sprinkling the GPL on top of a project no one wants anyway does nothing (I say this from experience), and applying it to a popular program just holds it back (by keeping it from getting the cash that people would otherwise pay).

As an end-user, I want to see Light Table take off, and to continue innovating, not to continually engage in campaigns for donations.