[OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of a project's license

[Mr. Puneet Kishor]

On Jul 27, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Landon Blake <sunburned.surveyor at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think there is a tradeoff in the licensing decision between the
> greater adoption that comes with a "weaker" license, and the stricter
> adherence to open source principles that come with a "stronger"
> license. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html)
> 
> I'm not making a statement about which license is better for OSGeo
> Projects, I'm just making a general statement. I personally feel the
> principles in the GPL and LGPL are more important than wider adoption
> for my projects. But I'm just a hobby programmer.


Yes, choice of license is a personal one, and while we may disagree on it, we have to abide by the choices that others make.

Personally, I care enough about free and open access that I want to see as wide adoption as possible. And, that includes those who may want to take my work, modify it, and re-release the modifications under a more restrictive license. If that leads to wider adoption, and there is some empirical evidence it does, I am all for it. Which is why I tend to use CC0 -- that is, effectively in the Public Domain, reverted to CC-BY where PD is not possible or impractical.


--
Puneet Kishor