In 2008 I plan to begin developing the first of a suite of applications. In the back of my mind I know that I want to use the GPLv2 or GPLv3 license, although I will read them fully before deciding. I'll also read into other licenses. One of the things that makes me question the GPL is that I read comments in various blogs saying that GPL is a bad choice because businesses jump up onto their chairs or run away quickly when they hear GPL. Why??
Are these "businesses" really programmers or software development companies who are thinking about using a library but can't if it is GPL because their license is not compatible? If that's the case I know LGPL helps, but my applications are not libraries for reuse. I can't think of any reason why a business would not want to use my applications based on which license they use.
The other thing I've been wondering about is this "free as in beer" saying. To me free as in beer == not free. I don't know about you, but I've never gone to the beer store and come home with free beer. What do people mean when they say free as in beer? Free to do whatever you want including re-branding, selling for profit, and not contributing back to the main project? Those are the kinds of things that scare me away from the Apache license. I've head of project owners who are overthrown, lose their commit rights and say in their own creations to "the community". I've also heard conspiracy theories such as how IBM wanted OpenJDK to be Apache licensed so that they could do what they want with it and not contribute back. Even if it's not true, it's a scary thought.
Working from his home office in Toronto,
Ryan de Laplante can be found developing software in
Java by day, and obsessing with technology by night.
Ryan has been designing and writing software for
IJW since 1998 and is very passionate about his work.
