GPL or BSD?

Here's a small, curious question that came to me while chatting with some friends: If you were to release an opensource script in SecondLife, which license would you use: GPL or BSD?

If you select "Other", please actually describe what your choice would be. (no, seriously.)

Public domain?

Other:
You rip the code for profit, I find and hurt you.

Or... in a blog post I'm writing up, I put code in that verifies the creator. If the creator isn't ME, then you or the 'customer' will be impacted very severely.

Um, is it against the TOS to steal money if they stupidly give permission?

I say other because I often produce stuff for scripters as tools - libraries of sorts. When its something specific, say, a script for a vehicle, I would release it GPL, a Multidimentional List API on the other hand, I would release public domain. I made the latter in order to facilitate development of SL scripting in general, not just for things that people release free.
==Chris

When i have to choose a license i usually use GPL or LGPL depending, but sometimes I'll uses Creative Commons. Never used BSD or MIT, but there is nothing stopping you from licensing it under multiple licenses (it's perfectly valid).

maybe 18 months ago i wrote a script that was a notecard -> email that would send messages to LL tech support (they wanted me to send this bug report to their email, i was a bit... nonplussed; any-who) i released it under GPL and CC (though i don't remember the CC license i used).

If it's something i release to the public it is either public domain, CC-By LGPL, GPL.

CC-By is my favorite when it comes to giving things away, as all the user has to do to use it is add my name to the credits somewhere.

What I like about Creative Commons is it's so simple. That makes it easy-to-understand for people who want to get involved but might otherwise get confuzzled by a rashload of technical details.

I use the BSD license. I want people to use my code even if they aren't writing open source software themselves. I do require attribution in the documentation or other supporting materials, but not in advertisng. The BSD license is pretty simple, it comes down to: "don't remove the copyright notice and license, and don't sue us if it doesn't work".

I second this statement. The GPL is fine if you dont want anyone to use it in anything non-free, but if you want to raise the quality of everything, by allowing people to use your work, regardless of purpose, the BSD is the way to go.

The BSD is ideal for when your releasing something so that 'Nothing has any right to be less good than this.', the GPL is ideal for when releasing something where you dont want anyone to use it in a closed source product. (Note, the GPL and BSD licenses both still allow the product to be resold.)

-Adam

GPL is my favourite. If I release something to the public, they better make improvments available to all. If they don't want to... well, I can alway give (sell) them an alternate license version, my choice case by case.

The GPL doesn't require anyone to make anything available to the public. It just means that if you make ANYTHING available you have to make the whole thing available.

Unless your code is best-of-breed *and* something so complex that it can't be easily cloned, GPLing the code may just encourage people to use something else. They could even prototype it using your code then re-implement the functionality from scratch without violating the GPL. There's some obvious examples where the GPL code *is* that complex and that good in the real world, but in SL? Too much of the free code in SL makes me want to rewrite it from scratch, just because of the design.

And in SL there's another complication: the digital rights support in SL is pretty much unbeatable... so there's no way you could investigate a possible violation without Linden Labs actively supporting you, and possibly a judge willing to sign papers for you. Realistically, even the BSDL is unenforcable in SL. I'll still use it rather than "this is public domain" because the requirements are minor and people are usually happy to accomodate them.

Of course, if someone makes a gadget with GPL code that only she uses, then no need to release code changes to anyone I guess.



More power to them, that'll be good finger and coding exercise. The point is, another programmer doing a GPLed project can use them right-away.

What if you make an object using a GPLed script that is designed to communicate with another object (on a chat-channel) say. Is the listening object "infected" by the viral GPL? Or is the second object a different programming entity altogether?

This is ok... just like outside of SL it is ok for a proprietary client to send data to a GPL server and vice versa. Quick example: ssh.com's ssh client has no problems communicating with an openssh server.

Also "infected" and "viral" is MS FUD there is nothing viral about GPL code... it doesn't self replicate and infect other non-gpl code. Either you choose to use it or you don't.

In practice, in the real world, the programmer doing the proprietary project only seems to bother with this step after they've been found out. And that applies to BSD violations, too, by the way... remember the whole USL-CSRG lawsuit mess? Ironic that the result of that was to effectively make a whole bunch of AT&T code pretty close to public domain, and that's now proving useful in the SCO-Linux mashup...

I guess what I'm getting at is that when you're dealing with unethical developers, it doesn't matter what license you're using. And ethical ones tend to send you their changes to your code whether you want them or not. It's odd, programmers in SL don't seem to like getting patches and bug fixes to their open-source software.

I chose "BSD", but my real answer would be BSD/Other.

Most of the software I write (games in my spare time, web applications for day job) is proprietary and closed-source, because there's no reason for anyone else to be poking through it. When I end-of-life my own code, I release it under BSD, because I want to contribute it to the world's knowledge.

The BSD license is modeled on how scientific information sharing works: You can use anything you find in a science journal, but you have to give proper attribution.

It's actively malicious to use GPL. The reason Stallman created the GPL was because all of his friends at MIT went out and got real jobs, and he didn't (because he's a smelly unwashed hippy who doesn't bathe or delouse his beard), and he was jealous. So he started trying to destroy commercial software. It's nothing but hate speech.

I, like Torley, am going to have to stand by CC, largely for its simplicity. Not only do *you* know exactly what you're allowing your users to do with it, but your users know exactly what they're allowed to do with it. There's absolutely no reason that I should have to slog around in paperwork just to figure out how to put together a license that does what I want it to.

Are you serious or just parodying some of the hardline anti-GPL types.

I don't much like the GPL, but sheesh...

Go read even his own words on the Gnu site, explaining the origin and purpose of the GPL. Then go look at what the other people who were involved in the MIT AI lab have to say about it. Then ask the gcc development team about Stallman's antics for political control over it. Ask yourself why, if the GPL is "free", you have to give your copyright up to Gnu in order to contribute to a Gnu project. Read why he doesn't like the LGPL. Very quickly, it becomes obvious what this man's character is.

Here's his own words:

"In the GNU Project, discrimination against proprietary software is not just a policy--it's the principle and the purpose. Proprietary software is fundamentally unjust and wrong, so when we have the opportunity to place it at a disadvantage, that is a good thing." -Richard Stallman

As he openly admits, Stallman is the enemy of all who want to produce software for a living. I don't know if he's done as much damage to the software industry as Bill Gates, but it's a close call.

BSD licensed software (and the equivalent MIT, X, and Apache licenses) contributes to the world. GPL leaves poisoned wells in its wake.

First, RMS is an extremist. But that's okay. People (we) have brains to use them. If RMS says "GPL everything", we don't have to sheeply follow. But what we should do, is think, and use our brains.

Take software case-by-case, think about it. Does the GPL suit this type of software? Or maybe the LGPL? Or the BSD license?

The Linux kernel is under the GPL. And that choice was for it's good, as history shows.
Many libraries, or programs choose the LGPL, which gives the 'world' the most when a commercial software gets joined with those libraries. Any knowledge, any bugfix will go back to the public, while the commercial company can still make business.

If I want to make a library in RL, let's say a text-to-speech library, and I want it (would like it to be) technically the best in the world, I would choose the LGPL license, because that guarantees the most deployments (free and commercial software), and the most bugfixes, enhancements getting back into the 'main branch'.

In SL, I don't think the GPL works that too well. Most of the time the scripts are released 'as-is' and with no maintainance, no central website, etc. Then you have people using the scripts, modifying, adding new functions, but it doesn't really get back to the 'main' branch. In fact, it seems there's no main branch. More like a word-of-mouth (or forum, whatever) network. If the GPL script is a utility, library of some kind, that works with link messages, that practically means LGPL status.

But maybe this will change in the future.

Anyhow, I advocate the LGPL license, that's the one for pride and glory

That actually makes sense. If you didn't do that, then if they wanted to update the GPL they would have to get everyone who had contributed to allow them to change the license from "GPL v2.0 or later" to "GPL v3.0 or later".

Regardless of what I think of the GPL, and despite my negative reaction to what I've read so far about GPL3, this is not an unreasonable requirement.

And regardless of what I think about the GPL, I still find your personal attack on Stallman excessive.