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4aa540f154
This is a **draft**, probably will be controversial, definitely needs wordsmithing. Fixes #380 "No clear message on why to choose an open source license" -- added line under heading Fixes #335 "Feedback from John Sullivan talk on license choosers" -- remaining items were (roughly) to not surface patents at this level, and to surface choice between allowing proprirary/closed source or not Fixes #239 "Consider discussing ecosystems with an already predominant license" (well, it doesn't *discuss* but there's a page for that, unlinked til now) and makes the default recommendation of just about everyone -- use exisitng project/community's license if applicable -- prominent on the site Closes #48 "Proposed modified workflow: make permissive/copyleft and patents orthogonal" though probably not in way submitter would favor. I could be convinced that Apache-2.0 should be featured rather than MIT because of the former's express patent grant, but as it stands I'm not sure the complexity of Apache-2.0 (and for a weak grant, relative to GPLv3) is worth it relative to MIT. There's some value in the first license a user looks at being really easy to understand. The continued popularity of MIT and simialar ISC and BSD-2/3 seems to indicate people want that simplicity. And where are the holdups based on patents supposedly infringed by open source projects under licenses without an express patent grant that could not have happened had those projects been under Apache-2.0? Please educate me! :) Any and all feedback most welcome.
20 lines
1.5 KiB
HTML
20 lines
1.5 KiB
HTML
---
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layout: default
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permalink: licenses/
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class: license-types
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title: Licenses
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---
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<p>Open source licenses grant permission to everyone to use, modify, and share licensed software for any purpose, subject to conditions preserving the provenance and openness of the software. The following licenses are arranged from one with the strongest of these conditions (GNU AGPLv3) to one with no conditions (Unlicense). Notice that the popular licenses featured on the <a href="/">home page</a> (GNU GPLv3, Apache License 2.0, and MIT License) fall within this spectrum.</p>
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<p style="font-size:small; margin-bottom: 40px">If you were looking for a reference table of all of the licenses on choosealicense.com, see the <a href="/appendix">appendix</a>.</p>
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="agpl-3.0" %}
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="gpl-3.0" %}
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="lgpl-3.0" %}
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="mpl-2.0" %}
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="apache-2.0" %}
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="mit" %}
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{% include license-overview.html license-id="unlicense" %}
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The above licenses represent the entire spectrum of open source licenses, from highly protective to unconditional. One of these should work for most new open source projects. Many other open source licenses exist, including older versions of and close substitutes for some of the above. See the resources listed on our <a href="/about/">about page</a> if you'd like to read more.
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