search

tobi2006 / mysds

The database application for the Law Team at CCCU
Other
0 stars 0 forks source link

LICENSE file #1

Closed yamatt closed 11 years ago

yamatt commented 11 years ago

It's standard practice (not sure how official it is) to have the license in a LICENSE file in the root of the repo.

tobi2006 commented 11 years ago

There is a GPL.md file in the root directory, but that's probably a bit hidden... And I'm thinking to change it to a BSD style license anyway to allow wider adoption. Still undecided about it though.

On 26/10/13 21:50, Matthew Copperwaite wrote:

Would be good if this repo is under an open license to have a LICENSE file on the root.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tobi2006/mysds/issues/1.

yamatt commented 11 years ago

To be honest I prefer the way you have done it but if you look around at other repos the general consensus is to use a LICENSE file I think because it's easier for a machine and human to find it because they know exactly where to go.

As for license try TLDR Legal as it will give you an idea about the limitations. I have no issue with a BSD style license, it is GPL compatible so it can remain Free.

My issue with BSD style licenses is that if a company thought this project was a good idea they can take it, re-license it under whatever they want and sell it without much thought as to giving anything back to the project. If you're happy with that, as in, you really don't mind what people do with it as long as people are using it then BSD is fine.

If you chose GPL and a business takes it, makes changes and sells it on they are required to make their changes available, meaning you get their effort back in to your project

tobi2006 commented 11 years ago

As for license try TLDR Legal http://www.tldrlegal.com/ as it will give you an idea about the limitations. I have no issue with a BSD style license, it is GPL compatible so it can remain Free.

Thanks - really good website! The only thing that could improve it is the Creative Commons style find-your-perfect license toolbox ("Do you want to allow commercial use?" etc).

My issue with BSD style licenses is that if a company thought this project was a good idea they can take it, re-license it under whatever they want and sell it without much thought as to giving anything back to the project. If you're happy with that, as in, you really don't mind what people do with it as long as people are using it then BSD is fine.

Thanks for raising that point. My thought was that a lot of schools / universities might get paranoid about GPL code and having to share their changes. But actually the thought of some commercial vendor forking it and closing it up completely is scary... I guess I stay with the GPL and will need to make it more modular, so that institutions can adapt it to their need without having to modify the code too much.

yamatt commented 11 years ago

Even just the FSF site needs a way to easily select a GPL license. I would build one but I don't know enough about the differences, but you are right it is a faff to choose.

As for making things modular I would say just keep doing things as you are. A lot of the problems that moodle has, in my opinion, are down to it being far too modular. This makes configuration and management much harder.

I think you will find the MVC development model Django uses will help with this a lot as long as you stick to it but solve your problems. Then, hopefully, other people will solve their problems and you can come together on a single method for doing it.

tobi2006 commented 11 years ago

True - I don't want to turn this into configuration hell. But it would be good if institutions could adapt some things - like the marksheet layout - without having to publish it. Currently, it's a nightmare to change that anyway, so it's worth thinking about it.

And I have renamed the GPL file into LICENSE. Should be clearer now.