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Marc Poulin
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58 lines
1.7 KiB
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58 lines
1.7 KiB
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##################
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Choosing a License
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##################
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.. image:: /_static/photos/33907149294_82d7535a6c_k_d.jpg
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Your source publication *needs* a license. In the US, if no license is
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specified, users have no legal right to download, modify, or distribute.
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Furthermore, people can't contribute to your code unless you tell them what
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rules to play by. Choosing a license is complicated, so here are some pointers:
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Open source. There are plenty of `open source licenses
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<http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical>`_ available to choose
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from.
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In general, these licenses tend to fall into one of two categories:
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1. licenses that focus more on the user's freedom to do with the
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software as they please (these are the more permissive open
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source licenses such as the MIT, BSD, & Apache).
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2. licenses that focus more on making sure that the code itself —
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including any changes made to it and distributed along with it —
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always remains free (these are the less permissive free software
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licenses such as the GPL and LGPL).
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The latter are less permissive in the sense that they don't permit
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someone to add code to the software and distribute it without also
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including the source code for their changes.
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To help you choose one for your project, there's a `license chooser <http://choosealicense.com/>`_,
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**use it**.
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**More Permissive**
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- PSFL (Python Software Foundation License) -- for contributing to Python itself
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- MIT / BSD / ISC
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+ MIT (X11)
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+ New BSD
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+ ISC
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- Apache
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**Less Permissive:**
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- LGPL
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- GPL
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+ GPLv2
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+ GPLv3
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A good overview of licenses with explanations of what one can, cannot,
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and must do using a particular software can be found at
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`tl;drLegal <https://tldrlegal.com/>`_.
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