







Non-judgmental guidance on choosing a license for your open source project
Choose an open source license
Non-judgmental guidance on choosing a license for your open source project

Licenses – Open Source Initiative
The content on this website, of which Opensource.org is the author, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Opensource.org is not the author of any of the licenses reproduced on this site. Questions about the copyright in a license should be directed to the license steward. Read our Privacy Policy
Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing | TechCrunch
New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.

Open Source is a cost-allocation system
Because the right to use the software is not tied to payment, the license does not connect the people who benefit, the people who decide, and the people who bear the costs. Projects have to build those connections deliberately through governance.


Katerina Marchán (@zkat@toot.cat)
Open source maintainers of major projects (hi) are not ready to accept and talk about how the cultural insistence on permissive licensing is just straight up labor exploitation taking advantage of our addiction to popularity (also hi). We’re doing this to ourselves too, you know.
Paying people to work on open source is good actually - Jacob Kaplan-Moss
If you have a problem with maintainers getting paid then you have a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate.

Sorting out the Ethical Licensing Mess
Software developers who give the world, for free, usage rights to the code they write often use open source licenses to make this gift legally explicit. These free usage rights (and then some) are …

Licenses List - Creative Commons
Creative Commons is the nonprofit behind the open licenses and other legal tools that allow creators to share their work. Our legal tools are free to use.
Why I used to prefer permissive licenses and now favor copyleft

Reimagining OSS Licensing and Commercialization with Fair Source - Adam Jacob, System Initiative