Re: Patch Licensing Terms

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

Jonathan Goble <jcgoble3@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 25, 2017 at 7:37 PM Paige DePol <lual@serfnet.org> wrote:
> I am working on a website to document and distribute my patch collection,
> some of which are small "power patches", while others are considerably larger.
> 
> I want to use the Creative Commons[1] licensing scheme but wonder about the
> "Share Alike" provision. According to the licensing notice in lua.h it seems
> Lua gives the user full rights to the software as long as attribution to the
> original authors is given in derivative works. The Lua license makes no
> stipulations about having to open-source any modified versions of the source. 
> 
> Generally speaking, Creative Commons's own FAQ explicitly recommends
> against using their license for software, for multiple reasons. [2] That
> answer further states that "Additionally, our licenses are currently not
> compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to
> integrate CC-licensed work with other free software." IANAL, so I would
> interpret that on the safe side to mean that no CC license is fully
> compatible with the MIT license (what Lua uses).
> 
> [1] (quoted footnote)
> [2] https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software

Well, darn... how the heck did I miss that? Thank you very much for pointing
this out to me, it is very appreciated! :)

I think I will just go with the MIT license Lua uses then. Upon further
reflection I don't know if I want to force people to have to release their
changes under a specific license just because they used some of my code.
Oh... wait, is this the issue people were having years ago with the changes
to the GPL? The "poison pill" or whatever that Microsoft was calling it?

If people are using my code than I am happy enough with attribution, though
I will still hope that they would release and share their changes.. but
I won't force them to via a license.

Thanks again for you feedback, I really don't know how I missed that caveat,
but at least now I know and won't create an incompatible licensing scheme!

~Paige