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

This Is Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice how they never mentioned once the BSD license, arguably the most free license there is in the world.

The whole premise of this exercise is ridiculous.

Re:This Is Ridiculous

[maxwell demon]

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

But it is not ridiculous anyway. It details what they think about how software should be licensed in order to further their goals.
Now your goals may be different to their goals, so the advice doesn't fit your goals. So what? You may not share the goals, but the article isn't about the goals, but how to reach them. 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.

Of course you can argue whether their goals are right. But that's a different topic, unrelated to the question how to reach them.

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.

Re:This Is Ridiculous

[jfrelinger]

Free for developers looking to make closed derivative works. Not free for society, other developers, and certianly not users.

Just because someone makes a closed fork, doesn't mean the original disappears. The original is still there and still free for users, still free for other developers, and society. Your statement is pure copyleft FUD.

If you want it to be "free," just go public domain it. GPL is about actually keeping software free, not providing a toolkit to proprietary developers.

The whole reason the BSD license exists is to explicitly provide protections to the original author that public domain doesn't explicitly provide, like indemnity to lack of fitness, warranty etc.

Re:No BSD

[Qubit]

if they're going to mention things like the Apache license, they should include the BSD license....Whether you agree with it or not, it's a valid license, and should be included in the decision tree for choosing a license.

I mean look at it this way: This is the FSF's cheat-sheet decision tree for people to choose a Free Software license. You could easily compare this document with that page that Creative Commons has to help people choose a Free Culture license.

Now I don't have (read: I'm too lazy to go look up the url right now) the CC page memorized, but last I remembered they only put a few of their CC licenses on there. There wasn't any CC0 listed, and I don't remember the CC-GPL or the Remix license (not sure if that latter license is even being promoted by them anymore).

If the FSF's target is people who don't geek out on the particular nuances of "distribute" vs "convey" in a FOSS license, then they aren't going to give someone a complete primer on all licenses. Remember that this document is designed as a tool for choosing a license, not working with existing licenses. Sure, if I had to educate a bunch of software developers about FOSS licenses I would probably start with the GPL, then move to BSD (3-clause, natch), MIT, Apache, and maybe sprinkle in some cautionary tales about weak or incompatible licenses. But that ain't the game here.

It's obvious why the FSF chose the Apache 2.0 license as their default permissive license

1. It's well written by Real Laywers
2. It offers some patent protection
3. It's GPLv3-compatible

Sure, the new BSD and MIT licenses are shorter, but they don't offer developers and end-users the same kinds of structured protections that are available in the GPLv3 and Apache 2.0. And that's what the FSF is designed to promote.