Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software

Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software by phkahler on Saturday June 13, 2015 @02:22PM (#9711995)

License proliferation was a problem largely supported by the OSI. IMHO there are really only 3 free/open licenses necessary - GPL, LGPL and BSD (or MIT). Anyone else is trying to be open or free while also supporting some other agenda.

If you want it both ways, go dual lincense with GPL and a commercial license. Just be up front and honest about it.

That said, I need to reread GPL3 in detail...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software by dredmorbius on Saturday June 13, 2015 @06:24PM (#9712941)

There are a few other variants. Affero, as noted, also the Mozilla Public License, which applies on a file-by-file basis and allows for proprietary code to be integrated into a MozPL licensed work as a whole and distributed.

But otherwise, yes: GPL, LGPL, BSD/MIT are the principle cases.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software by the_why_of_y on Sunday June 14, 2015 @09:14AM (#9714765)

I'd prefer if people forget about BSD/MIT and use ALv2 instead, for the patent clauses.

With the following preferred licenses you'd get explicit patent clauses, in ascending order of copyleft-ness:

ALv2 MPLv2 LGPLv3 GPLv3 AGPLv3

Perhaps the Eclipse Public License would also be an alternative at the same level as MPLv2 but I'm not familiar with it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software by dredmorbius on Monday June 15, 2015 @02:38AM (#9717843)

Fair point.

ALv2 == Apache License, v2.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software by ArtB on Saturday June 13, 2015 @05:27PM (#9712730)

Don't forget the AGPL.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software by reitanqild on Saturday June 13, 2015 @06:23PM (#9712934)

GPL is just a subset of AGPL, isn't it?

[ Parent | on HN ]