Blogging Roller

Dave Johnson on open web technologies, social software and software development


Gimme credit, gimme fixes, gimme it ALL!

I've been exchanging emails with a developer who has integrated my old Relay-IRC chat client into his gaming web site. The guy doesn't understand the Mozilla Public License and I'm not sure I'm smart enough to explain it to him, but I tried just the same. Along the way, I came up with this.

Dave's dumbed-down explanation of open source licenses.

Here's what you're telling your downstream users when you pick one of the three levels of open source licenses:
  • Level 1: Gimme credit (APL, BSD, MIT)
    You can use, modify and redistribute my code in your product but give me credit (actually, modern BSD doesn't even require credit).
  • Level 2: Gimme fixes (MPL, CDDL, LGPL)
    You can use, modify and redistribute my code in your product but give me the source for any fixes you make to it.
  • Level 3: Gimme it ALL! (GPL)
    You can use, modify and redistribute my code in your product but give me your entire product's  source code.
What do you think; is it too dumbed-down to be useful?
Tags: opensource

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