FSF On How To Choose a License

ciaran_o_riordan writes "FSF have put together their license recommendations, beyond just their own licenses, for software, documentation, and other works: 'People often ask us what license we recommend they use for their project. We've written about this publicly before, but the information has been scattered around between different essays, FAQ entries, and license commentaries. This article collects all that information into a single source, to make it easier for people to follow and refer back to. The recommendations below are focused on licensing a work that you create — whether that's a modification of an existing work, or a new original work.'"

Comments

Re:This Is Ridiculous

[TheRaven64]

What is the advantage of the BSD license over the Apache license (which they did mention)?

Simplicity. OpenBSD rejects Apache 2.0 licensed code from the base system, because the license is so complex that you can't expect developers without legal training to understand it. I've read the Apache 2.0 license a few times, and I'm still not sure I could answer with 100% certainty what I can and can't do with the code.

Perhaps more importantly, the Apache 2.0 license is incompatible with GPLv2 code. This means that you can not mix code under these two licenses in the same codebase. To give a concrete example of when this has been a problem for me, I wanted to index PDFs using code derived from Poppler (derived from xpdf, GPLv2) and Apache Lucene (Apache 2) - this was not possible without jumping through hoops, such as separating the code into two independent programs that could be used together. If either piece of code had been BSDL, then this would have been much easier.

The interaction between the GPL and APSL code here made it harder for me to write Free Software. In the end, I just bumped that project down my to-do list and hacked on BSDL stuff instead.

It would be ridiculous if the advice obviously did not further their(!) goals. But it is totally irrelevant if they further your goals (except if your goals coincide with theirs). If you don't share their goals, then this article is not for you.

TFA purports to be advice. Advice should be telling people how to reach their goals, not yours. If someone's goals don't agree with yours, then the polite thing to do is refuse to give them advice, not give them bad advice.