Open source license for new libraries

Posted by storage-null-123@reddit | Python | View on Reddit | 12 comments

Hey, I'm curious about your opinions.

If you were building a new library today, which license would you release it under?

Something copyleft like GPL? LGPL?

or something permissive like BSD or MIT?

Are there situations that would sway your opinion one way or the other?

With copyleft, I like that improvements would remain in the open. On the other hand, with more permissive licenses, there's higher chance of adoption?

On the other hand, copyleft only affects big corporations. Open source projects or research labs that depend on it wouldn't be affected at all.

What do you think?

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IAmASquidInSpace@reddit

I'd probably go for MIT, but that is mostly because I work in science, and that is pretty much our standard license. MIT works great when your library is so specialized that you really don't need to worry about corporations "stealing" it, because it is of no practical use to anyone outside of your field, while also making it easy for the people in your field to use it.

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storage-null-123@reddit (OP)

Even in science, would making it GPL affect people/labs in your field to use it? After all, the goal in the scientific community is open dissemination of research and results. In that sense, a GPL wouldn't really affect them, would it?

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IAmASquidInSpace@reddit

Probably not much, no. I am, for example, currently using a code that is licensed under AGPL, and it is widely used. But that is also a full production code, with an active team of developers (as in: full-time developers, not scientists coding as a side effect of their research position).

Most of us produce far less sophisticated stuff, and I think that's why MIT stuck around: a simple license for simple libraries.

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storage-null-123@reddit (OP)

I sort of agree. Regarding the simplicity of MIT: is that simplicity really affecting the target user group? If not, then perhaps having a copy-left license protects from a corp in the unlikely scenario? or perhaps invites more contributions back?

Idk, I am unable to see why MIT over GPL unless one wants a corporations to be able to use the community's labour for free? Not that it's all that terrible but is that it I wonder?

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storage-null-123@reddit (OP)

By bambu do you mean - https://wiki.openbambu.org/?

This probably does not lie in my field so I'm curious what happened to them?

Something similar to what happened to Minix (https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/)?

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Mental_Direction_449@reddit

I personally will always go with (a)gpl. And that is mostly based on what happened with bambu recently.

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storage-null-123@reddit (OP)

By bambu do you mean - https://wiki.openbambu.org/?

This probably does not lie in my field so I'm curious what happened to them?

Something similar to what happened to Minix (https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/)?

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Mental_Direction_449@reddit

Basically a really big tl;dr of what happened to bambu-labs is that they used agpl code did not adhere to tehe license (which states you have to make any derivative open source) and they got into big big trouble. And I do like the idea that everything has to be open source with code I make. I want to see what people improve.

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