2020-04-07 11:28:3 (GMT)
When one submits a work to the AFP, there are two license possibilities to choose from: LGPL and BSD. Are there any license constraints for projects hosted on IsaFoL? And more generally, do you see a reason to prefer one or the other license when submitting some work to the AFP?
2020-04-07 11:38:32 (GMT)
We've never taken licensing very seriously at IsaFoL. Maybe we should have. :S
2020-04-07 11:38:55 (GMT)
Both LGPL and BSD are quite liberal -- i.e. it's unlikely somebody would knock on your door and ask for more.
2020-04-07 11:39:57 (GMT)
The BSD licences is very short. Personally that would be my favorite. But I don't know/recall what license was used for my entries so far (most of them with coauthors).
2020-04-07 12:6:22 (GMT)
Jasmin Blanchette said:
Both LGPL and BSD are quite liberal -- i.e. it's unlikely somebody would knock on your door and ask for more.
That was also my impression. The main difference between the two, as far as I can judge, is that BSD is not copylefted, but how much that matters in our context is not clear to me.
2020-04-07 12:9:43 (GMT)
Well the difference is simple. With "copyleft", the people modifying your work will be forced to keep their modifications/extension open source. With the more liberal BSD approach, they can do whatever the truck they want, including make money with it (of which you'd never see one cent).
2020-04-07 12:10:21 (GMT)
Since the chances of anybody using your work to make money are less than 1 in a million, I wouldn't worry too much about this. ;)
2020-04-07 12:19:7 (GMT)
That's true ^^. It is more of an ethical question in fact, about how public research should be made accessible. It can be argued that since we are paid by public money, our work should never become unreachable to the public, but at the same time, for the same reason, maybe the public should be allowed to turn our results into products and make money out of them as long as their use doesn't prevent others from accessing the original work that was done by researchers
(and I should definitely check what license the theories that I build on have, that could make things easier)
2020-04-07 12:19:34 (GMT)
Sure. That's why I'm personally in favor of BSD.
2020-04-07 12:19:49 (GMT)
There's even the 0-clause BSD license, which is the same as public domain.
2020-04-07 12:21:27 (GMT)
The other thing is, as long as you're alive, you can re-license your work.
2020-04-07 12:22:8 (GMT)
I.e. you can always change your mind. You can't prevent people from using old versions using the old license, but you can continue with a different license, or public-domain it.
2020-04-07 12:22:24 (GMT)
And once you're dead, then you stop worrying about licensing at the same time anyway. ;)