What Source Code License to use for your project?

I am starting this question to try and make a central point developers can use to choose what Source Code License to use for their projects.

What I am looking for out of this question are the following for the Licenses:

  • A short description of the License
  • What type of projects should this License be used for
  • Examples of existing projects that use this License
  • Some of the Licenses that I have in mind are the following:

  • Apache License 2.0
  • Artistic License/GPL
  • Eclipse Public License 1.0
  • GNU General Public License v2
  • GNU General Public License v3
  • GNU Lesser General Public License
  • MIT License
  • Mozilla Public License 1.1
  • New BSD License

  • the two most used licences are GPL and MIT/BSD. To choose between the two, ask yourself the following questions:

  • are you using any GPL code? then use GPL
  • are you writing in the context of an existing community? then use the community's favored license
  • do you want it to be used by anybody? then use MIT/BSD
  • do you want it to be used only on Open Source projects? then use GPL
  • is it server software, and you want any user to contribute, even if they use it only on their own servers? then use GPL v3
  • and these are the short (very short) descriptions of the licenses themselves:

  • MIT/BSD: anybody use for anything. the most you can ask for is attribution.
  • GPL v2: if anybody else (other than you) wants to use in another project, the whole project would be GPL. if anybody else writes enhancements/extensions/changes, they have to publish the changes if they distribute the resulting software.
  • GPL v3: like v2; but if they enhance your software they have to publish the changes, even if they don't distribute the software but only use on a public server.
  • LGPL: midway between GPL and BSD, mostly for libraries. if anybody use it for a project, the whole project don't have to be GPL; but if they modify the library itself (and distribute the result), they have to publish the changes.
  • 链接地址: http://www.djcxy.com/p/79532.html

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