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GPL: It's infectious so MOST software development company's won't touch
any GPL'd code, or they will use it internally and you'll never see any
changes.<br>
<br>
LGPL: Only infectious to changes made to your code (forced release of
changes to your package only). Commercial products can use your code in
commercial products as long as they release any changes they made to
the LGPL'd code. At this point, companys that are afraid to use open
source software or don't understand the LGPL won't use it.<br>
<br>
BSD: Someone could fork your project, make improvements and sell them
without releasing changes back to your original code. (Worse case
scenario; nothing in the license prevents people from contributing back
to your project if they want to.)<br>
<br>
Q&A:<br>
<br>
Do you want companys to be able to incorporate your software into any
of there packages? If yes, no to GPL. (They could use it, but they
likely won't use your code).<br>
<br>
Do you want changes made to pygr to be released to the public? If yes,
GPL or LGPL.<br>
<br>
Do you want changes made to pygr to be released to the public, but be
usable in commercial products without having to license it from you? If
yes, LGPL.<br>
<br>
Do you want the most number of people (with many packages, this
determines if the package lives or dies), including companys to be able
to use your code and possibly make improvements they might/might not
share? If yes, BSD.<br>
<br>
Do you want companys to only use your software if they pay for a
license to use your code in a commercial product? If yes, GPL and
commercial license. This gets complicated if anyone makes changes to
your code as they have copyright, unless they have to turn over the
copyright when they submit a patch, in which case you end up loosing
patches you might have gotten in the first place.<br>
<br>
In my opinion, python bioinformatics code needs to be usable to as many
users as possible if we are going to compete against other languages.
In this case I would recommend BSD, but if you want to force patches to
come back to pygr, LGPL would be ok (although you will loose some
potential users compared with a BSD license). GPL seems too limiting in
this case because people are likely to integrate pygr into other useful
packages... and since many people don't want their code to be GPL'd,
they will not use pygr in their project.<br>
<br>
I hope that helps.<br>
<br>
-Brandon King<br>
<br>
Bruce Southey wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midbbcd77d00709210947t408f3a22k236e8e4bb4848955@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hi,
IANAL and I am also assuming you are the sole copyright owner
otherwise this is a moot point. It is your code and consequently your
decision only on the license.
I don't share the view that GPL v2 is a bad choice and that the BSD
would be better. I do prefer the GPL v2 over the BSD. While I don't
think the GPL v2 is as good as it should be it is at least understood
and respected (to a large degree even given the busybox lawsuit). I
definitely do not agree with GPL v3, if for no other reason than it is
incompatible with GPL v2.
If you do not care about how you code is used and you do not care if
people don't send you
fixes then the BSD is the way to go. It also means you can not
complain if your code ends up elsewhere (like windows, mac OS) and
what happens to it. However, the GPLv2 is a suitable license if you
do care or want fixes.
I don't see how choosing the GPL v2 over the BSD makes it limiting to
other users. If people really want to include into their distributed
product then you can dual-license it to them under appropriate terms
(again assuming you are the sole copyright owner of the code).
Regards
Bruce
On 9/20/07, Christopher Lee <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:leec@chem.ucla.edu"><leec@chem.ucla.edu></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Based on feedback from a number of people who felt that the GPL
license was too limiting, I'm thinking of changing the Pygr license
from GPL to BSD, but would first like to get people's advice about
what they think would be the best license to use. I only used GPL
originally because it seemed to be what people favored at the time.
If people now feel that GPL is too restrictive, we can change the
license. In my view, the main purpose of the license is just to
ensure that the software is as useful as possible to people, within a
reasonable set of assumptions about sharing and attribution. Based
on the discussion on this group, it sounds like people prefer BSD.
I'd be very grateful for comments on this proposed change...
Thanks!
Chris
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/leelab">http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/leelab</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/pygr">http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/pygr</a>
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