licencepicker.com

[neuro]

lo troops,

i've decided to take up the gauntlet on the large gents challenge in S04 E05 to set up a site to let you answer a few simple questions and choose an OSI-approved licence to distribute your software with. I'm working on a first cut of the code now and will release the source very soon, but any suggestions, ideas or other comments at this point are very welcome

[Aq]

lo troops,

i've decided to take up the gauntlet on the large gents challenge in S04 E05 to set up a site to let you answer a few simple questions and choose an OSI-approved licence to distribute your software with. I'm working on a first cut of the code now and will release the source very soon, but any suggestions, ideas or other comments at this point are very welcome

Well, that's what we were hoping for

It needs to be all of the following, in my opinion:

1. Hysterically simple to use
2. Oriented towards people who don't know what licencing is and don't really care that much
3. Clear that it's not legal advice
4. Not full of legal jargon

The CC licence picker is obviously the best prior art in the field

Aq.

[sheepeatingtaz]

I'm working on a first cut of the code now and will release the source very soon

What license are you releasing under?

[bq]

I'm working on a first cut of the code now and will release the source very soon

What license are you releasing under?

Very droll!

Seriously though, I think this is a very good idea. Recently I was trying to decide on a licence to use for a web app I'm in the middle of making. When applying for the SF account I wasn't really sure which one to go for. I *could* go and research them all (well, the top few anyway) and I will do that, but licencepicker.com would sure be handy, maybe with a short summary of each licence too?

In the end I went for GPL for exactly the reasons stated in the show. It seems to work fine for a hell of a lot of OSS devs. It's all a bit academic at the moment though as there is no code available online to apply a licence to.

[Pad]

You might consider the OSI's recommended list - they have reduced it to 9 it seems:

http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:11636:200607:nknhhdligldemhkfb

good luck!

[Aq]

It needs to be all of the following, in my opinion:

One more point. It needs to ask you whether you're planning on using existing code in your system, and which licence(s) that code is under; if you're linking with GPLed code then that restricts the list of licences which you can use, for example, and that will constrain your choice, unless you wrote that GPLed code.

Aq.

[neuro]

Yeah, I'd already considered that given the GPL's restrictions and the LGPL's purpose.

[neuro]

I don't believe it ... someone registered licencepicker.com this morning It's anonymously registered to dreamhost - anyone want to own up to it?

[mrben]

I don't believe it ... someone registered licencepicker.com this morning It's anonymously registered to dreamhost - anyone want to own up to it?

'Twasn't me. sheepeatingtaz has a dreamhost account - might've been him.

[DJ]

Don't forget to grab licensepicker.com as well...

[sheepeatingtaz]

'Twasn't me. sheepeatingtaz has a dreamhost account - might've been him.

Nope. Wasn't me either, sorry.

[DJ]

Licencepicker will be here soon. Mailing list at http://lists.licencepicker.com/listinfo ... picker.com. Idea faithfully stolen from the Lug Radio crew!

[neuro]

Now says "no such list exists"

[matt]

Now says "no such list exists"

Damn, I assume that you owned the domain and the list, so signed up.

Seems to be Alan from AussieGeek.net

[davee]

Now says "no such list exists"

Remove the '.' from the end of the URL - it *does* exist, it seems.