Licensing thoughts: how to support an emergent project.
In these days I am thinking a lot about MIDDLE, the project I am working on in my spare time. I think it is a good product and I think it can help me building a better future. However I have been asked to release the project on a different license, BSD style, and I’m seriously questioning myself on what to do. I have read carefully a good site explaining different Open Source licenses, but in the end the license choice must be driven by our own targets!
It’s not an easy decision, it’s like taking your little creature and setting it at stake not to spread its wings and fly. I had choosen the LGPL, mostly because it was the “cooperative” Open Source upon which some proprietary code can be attached to. So everyone would be able to use my code, creating their own Closed Source modules (if it is the necessity), but contributing to the MIDDLE project in case of modifications.
The BSD licence style is quite different, because allows everyone to take the code and make virtually whatever he wants with it! Apart from the Rights notice, the eventual modifications to the Framework can be kept closed source. This is the only drawback of the BSD.
One (GPL and LGPL) is more focused on the “collaboration”, the other (BSD) is targeted to the Extreme Freedom.
Well, I will have a lot of thought on this: if the project would be successfull it would be important, for me, to be able to gain some benefits for the long sleepless night passed to create MIDDLE, from the other side, being able to create something that everyone would be able to use would be a Good Thing!
Hard Thoughts, therefore…
