[PD] best licence for pd-patches?

[Tobias Brodel]

Hi Martin,


On 04/21/17 18:20, martin brinkmann wrote:
> i have searched the archive, and something similar has been asked
> before, but i did not find a solution... (and probably 'the best
> licence' is not the same for everyone)
> i want to:
>
> -encourage (re)using and building upon my patches and sharing the results.
>
> -discourage plagiarism
>
> -not lock anyone (especially myself ;)) out from using
> my patches in a commercial and closed 'environment' (like
> a game on steam or an android/ios-app)
>
> the cc-by-sa which i use all the time for music and pictures
> seems to be appropriate, but i understand that it is not
> intended for code.
>
> gpl? would be great not to have to think about when including other work
> released under gpl. but can i make exceptions when it becomes
> necessary (app-store...)?
>
> lgpl?
>
> i am quite stuck. but i think i should (finally) put a proper
> licence on my released patches...
>

For my projects I tend to prefer the ISC License, it's very simple and the
preferred license of the OpenBSD project. Its only restriction is 
attribution,
so in this sense it would be most akin to a CC-BY license. Some people 
refer to
it as a 1-clause BSD license, and for use in commercial products 2- and 
3-clause
BSD licenses are likewise very straightforward.

If you are interested in weaker forms of copyleft the LGPL and MPL2.0 may be
good to think about. The LGPL allows dynamic linking with proprietary 
works, but
a statically linked program is subject to the LGPL. The MPL2.0 as far as 
I can
tell is per-file copyleft, where changes to the licensed files must be made
available but cannot affect the license-status of any linked program. Unlike
earlier versions of the MPL and the CDDL, MPL2.0 is specifically 
designed to be
GPL-compatible.

Copyleft licenses would be the closest analogue to the CC-BY-SA that you're
familiar with.

If you want to get your software into the Apple App Store you might have
trouble using the LGPL because of its relinking provisions. The GPL is
definitely banned. MPL2.0 and BSD-style licenses are ok however.

Please note this is just off the top of my head and I am no expert.

t/