lua-users home
lua-l archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]


For what it's worth, the popular SDL2 library uses the zlib license (as do zlib and libpng of course), so it's not exactly an arcane choice either - although I'm not disputing that MIT might be more well known.


On 10/27/2016 12:56 PM, Roberto Ierusalimschy wrote:
That sort of license (intentionally or not) severely limits the use of
a piece of software. As I understand it, (and I am not a lawyer), it’s not
recognized as valid in many places. In addition, many larger companies or
groups don’t want to deal with software that uses such licenses because
it’s perceived (rightly or wrongly) as non-serious. I remember learning
that even placing something in the public domain is not without problems
because that too is not recognized as legal in some places.
Those are the main reasons we changed for MIT several years ago.

Frequently, more important than the exact wording is how people perceive
the licence. MIT is a well known, well established licence that large
companies are accustomed to use; a developer don't have to go to a
company's laywer to check whether she can use that software. (And if
she goes, the laywer already has a standard answer for that case.)

-- Roberto