licensing

Created by Kylewm.com on May 10

• Sat, May 10 kylewm.com stubbed out licenses and some "research" on who's using what
• Sat, May 10 kylewm.com add link to Atwood article
• Sat, May 10 kylewm.com /* External License */ formatting
• Sat, May 10 kylewm.com /* Permissive */ explain difference b/t modified and simplified BSD licenses
• Sat, May 10 cweiske.de /* Copyleft */

This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWebCamp wiki by expanding it.

Open Source

Choosing an open source license can be challenging, but it is important to make some statement about your software's free (or non-free) status. Without a license, the implication is that others are not free to use your code.

Public Domain

• User:snarfed.org releases many of his projects (e.g., Bridgy) with the simple statement "This project is placed in the public domain."
• Unlicense: simple text discliaming any copyright, and explicitlly allowing use for any purpose. More explicit and professional-sounding than the WTFPL.

Permissive

Permissive licenses generally require attribution and that the original license text be included in redistributions, but do not require that derivative works remain open source.

This category seems to be by far the most popular among IndieWebCamp participants

• Apache License v2
  • User:aaronpk.com, IndieAuth, PushupCounter
  • User:notenoughneon.com, neonblog
  • User:benwerd.io, idno
• BSD
  • Modified BSD (3-clause) includes a non-endorsement clause (name of the copyright holder may not be used to endorse or promote...) that the SImplified (2-clause) license omits.
• MIT License
  • User:waterpigs.co.uk, Taproot-related libraries
  • Bear, ronkyuu
• Mozilla Public License

(10:58:48 PM) bear: i've used in the past: MIT, BSD 2-clause, MPL and plain ol' public domain

(10:59:25 PM) bear: MPL and Apache2 if I know it will be used commercially

Copyleft

Copyleft licenses require that derivative works remain open source, and often require they retain same license. For that reason, some critics consider these licenses "viral".

• GPL: probably the best-known copyleft license. Linked software must remain GPL, and libraries used by GPL software must be licensed with GPL or GPL-compatible licenses.
• AGPL
  • User:cweiske.de: phorkie, stapibas
• Creative Commons Share-Alike licenses
  • User:tantek.com's cassis.js is licensed under CC-BY-SA v3.0

External Links

• Jeff Attwod: Pick a License, Any License

 * add h-card to /about page
   * photo
   * location
     * current timezone
     * local weather