My opinions follow (contains colourful metaphors!):
I'm anti-GPL. I find the entire thing to be less of a free and open-source software license and more like a mass of hobbyist-approved, M$-style legalese. The BSD license, although extremely permissive, can logically be shortened down to two or three sentences. The rest is just to cover the developers' asses in the event someone uses their program and their computer shits itself.
The BSD license is interesting; it used to have four clauses, one of which was controversial. The original third clause said you had to include the following statement in your program and advertising: "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." It was removed in 1999 to create the three-clause license we call the BSD license today. Personally, I'm a major advocate of three-clause BSD (and the MIT license, too.)
Another fun little OSS license is the MIT license. It's basically a version of the two-clause BSD license but worded differently. FSF calls it the X11 license as it's most commonly used for (and was designed for use in) the X11 window system.
This one's kind of funny, and I'm not sure if I like it or not: The Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) for their Shared Source program. It's almost BSD-like but prohibits relicensing in source code form. It looks like Microsoft's response to the open source movement in the form of "Ballmer! Get the open source licensing people on the line! We're fucked!"
Oh gods no. It's not necessary, it's just evil. It kills our freedom to have our code used by the public following our guidelines, yet giving them lots of slack. It kills our freedom to have control, as users, over the way we're allowed to use the wonderful tools developers spend time writing for us.
I'm anti-GPL. I find the entire thing to be less of a free and open-source software license and more like a mass of hobbyist-approved, M$-style legalese. The BSD license, although extremely permissive, can logically be shortened down to two or three sentences. The rest is just to cover the developers' asses in the event someone uses their program and their computer shits itself.
The BSD license is interesting; it used to have four clauses, one of which was controversial. The original third clause said you had to include the following statement in your program and advertising: "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." It was removed in 1999 to create the three-clause license we call the BSD license today. Personally, I'm a major advocate of three-clause BSD (and the MIT license, too.)
Another fun little OSS license is the MIT license. It's basically a version of the two-clause BSD license but worded differently. FSF calls it the X11 license as it's most commonly used for (and was designed for use in) the X11 window system.
This one's kind of funny, and I'm not sure if I like it or not: The Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) for their Shared Source program. It's almost BSD-like but prohibits relicensing in source code form. It looks like Microsoft's response to the open source movement in the form of "Ballmer! Get the open source licensing people on the line! We're fucked!"
paxcoder wrote: Don't you think copyleft is a necessary "evil"? You say GPL wants us to "share-the-way-we-tell-you-to-or-don't-distribute", but I'm asking: what's the problem in that kind of sharing? What your freedoms does GPL compromise, accept your "freedom" to deprive someone else of the very same freedom you have been given? I see nothing "hypocritical" in it.
Oh gods no. It's not necessary, it's just evil. It kills our freedom to have our code used by the public following our guidelines, yet giving them lots of slack. It kills our freedom to have control, as users, over the way we're allowed to use the wonderful tools developers spend time writing for us.
