There’s such a rich plethora of licenses!

For a while, I was quite enamoured with the Creative Commons licenses. This is probably due to my creative standpoint in everything I do. However, they do not recommend using CC licenses for software… CC0 can be used with software, but even there, they sort of nudge you in the direction of the GPL or AL.

This kinda sucks, but I can understand the reasons.

Software licenses

So… for licensing software, I’ve been doing some digging, have read through quite a number of licenses and explanatory texts, and been thinking for a while. It’s quite a lot to digest.

I think that, for now, I’m going to use either of:

• Apache License 2.0

  I’ll replace all CC licenses I’ve applied to software with this one, except for CC0, see below.

  My main reason for choosing this one is, frankly, that I’ve more experience with this than any other, except perhaps the GPL v2.0.

• The Unlicense

  I’ll replace all public domain-ish licenses I’ve applied to anything with this one.

I’ve also eyed these:

• Artistic License 2.0

  I’m kinda attracted by this because of its “artistic” viewpoint. But I’m a bit unsure about some of its copyleft-ish elements; I haven’t decided yet if they are too restrictive for my purposes.

• GNU Public License 3.0

  You really can’t get away from looking at this license, ‘cause it’s kinda sorta ubiquitous, and the grand-father of the whole FOSS movement. However, while I understand the goals of the FSF, I find this license too restrictive for my purposes.

Licenses for other things

For other works, such as my photography, I’ll stick with the Creative Commons licenses for public work, for now. Usually, that would be:

• CC-BY

  For works that others may play with.

• CC-BY-ND

  For works where I want to retain absolute creative control.