picking a software license

[dsernst]

Need to pick a software license. I'm leaning strongest towards GPL or MIT.

• MIT (Expat) is the easiest choice, and one of the most popular. It's basically "Do whatever you want, as long as you include this license if this source is redistributed". But derivative works can be relicensed more restrictively, and the source of derivative works is not required to be shared.
• GPL is another compelling choice. It requires that the source must be republished in derivative works, as well as changes made. Used by GNU/Linux, Wikipedia, Wordpress, etc. The Free Software Foundation answers plenty of questions about the benefits of this license: GPL FAQ

Feel free to chime in if you have opinions on this

[aneeqa8952]

• The MIT (Expat) is an academic license that allows sub-licensing. One downside to this is that in a chain of downstream sub-licensing, any user has the option of applying a congregate license to the modified work (which can include any of the other open-source licenses but can even include a proprietary license).
• The GPL, on the other hand, is a reciprocal license that does not allow sub-licensing and ensures reciprocity under the same license by all users who wish to contribute to the project.
• For sub-licensing reasons, I'd suggest the GPL-3.
• Is there any particular reason why you're not considering the Apache License 2.0?

[dsernst]

Thanks for that.

I'm leaning most towards GPL-3 too.

No particular reason not to include Apache. It just didn't seem to have a compelling benefit that the other two don't offer.