search

MotionDogs / Lenzhound-dev-pre-release

All active work now moved to Lenzhound-1.x repository. This repo will no longer be maintained.
GNU General Public License v3.0
0 stars 0 forks source link

Open Source License #31

Closed LoneWolf367 closed 9 years ago

LoneWolf367 commented 9 years ago

Hey @MotionDogs/lenzhound-crew,

It's time to include a open source license with our code for distribution! If anyone has any preference or rational for choosing one over the other please speak your mind.

Here is a giant list of all that are available... the ones I'm considering are GLPv3, MIT, and Apache 2.0.

I'll try my best to outline a few differences and compatibility with each other

GPLv3 - If someone wants to distribute the application they are required to make the source code available. Apache 2.0 - Someone may include the Apache licensed code but can then modify / add on and relicense their work and distribute it closed source. This license also includes explicit language- Google and Facebook tend to release their stuff under this. MIT - Quite a few of our libraries are currently using the MIT license. It's compatible and can be included in Apache or GPLv3 projects. This is the most simplistic. Users can modify and release closed source derivative works if they please.

From a business standpoint MIT or Apache 2.0 I see a potential business in developing proprietary systems for clients who are interested in our technology. At the same time, we may be giving larger established entities are market advantage, while GPLv3 would eliminate the possibility of redistributing closed source derivative works and it's a little more altruistic to the open source ideals.

Thoughts and opinions? Hoping to modify and update this information here in the next few days as interest to develop on our platform is now beginning to grow.

Thanks guys!

jacobbenlewis commented 9 years ago

Shoot, does that mean I need to get serious about re-styling my code to conform to the standards?

And do we want to get a sizable unit test suite up before opening ourselves to public input?

LoneWolf367 commented 9 years ago

I wouldn't worry too much about re-styling or unit testing at the moment. We have some people clamoring due to the sluggishness of releasing our code so just want to get the legal stuff squared away ASAP.

Them other things would be great to knock out in short time though. We should have all our Kickstarter rewards full-filled here in the next 2 weeks so several hundred people will be messing with their units. I will be opening up our forums as soon as we have gotten this far to begin the community building process.

dashed commented 9 years ago

Shoot, does that mean I need to get serious about re-styling my code to conform to the standards?

This is irrelevant to the license.

Essentially it comes down to what your goals are.

Regardless, you must decide whether you want to go to the GPL route or not.

TBH, if the software in question is specifically made for the hardware you guys produce; that is, the software is useless without the specific hardware. Then I'd just recommend going with BSD or Apache.

dashed commented 9 years ago

To clarify my suggestion.

At the same time, we may be giving larger established entities are market advantage, while GPLv3 would eliminate the possibility of redistributing closed source derivative works and it's a little more altruistic to the open source ideals.

This is nice. But people will probably want to hack their units without having to be forced to open sourcing everything they modify. I think they should have the freedom to open source stuff they modify at their own discretion.

At the same time, something like the arduino project use GPL: https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/ Seems to work fine for them.

Also, any open source license for code doesn't require you guys to disclose your hardware designs.

LoneWolf367 commented 9 years ago

Thanks for your feedback @Dashed!

It seems 2 of the libraries we are currently using are GNU. EEPROM is LGPLv2.1 and QP under GPLv2.

I was leaning towards the Apache license but it seems there may be some compatibility issues with GPLv2. Looks like I have some homework to do... Maybe you have some additional guidence reguarding this @Dashed. Near as I can tell this requires us to release under GPL since we are linking libraries.

LoneWolf367 commented 9 years ago

I think we're going to go for GPLv3. If nobody has any issues with this I will go ahead and add the appropriate license file to the repository and modify file headers to include information as well.

dashed commented 9 years ago

Yeah. Unfortunately, if the 3rd-party libraries are GPL, then you should use GPL-compatible license.

I have no objections on GPLv3.

squarewave commented 9 years ago

I think we're actually required by QP to use GPLv3(+), are we not? link for reference

Edit: Nevermind, they have an exception for Arduino. Nevertheless I'm totally cool with GPL.

LoneWolf367 commented 9 years ago

I believe we are SquareWave. Thanks for confirming all. We are going GPLv3! I will get around to including license information throughout this weekend.