Page 1 of 1

Open Source License

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:44 am
by Charles256
So I'm getting to the point in a project where I'm going to be releasing a "light weight" gallery into the main stream. By lightweight I mean light on files not light on featuers. To give a little background I thought of doing this because several of the gallerys I've run into are totally over bloated. I swear they have at least 500 files. Very annoying. That and I wanted this gallery to be 100% customizable via CSS and to get the point across I have a designer friend of mine working on three radically different layouts and he's only allowed to mod the css. As I get closer to launch date ( hopefully in a month) I began to review my license choices and the one I found that bests suits my needs is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode and I was wondering ifd any of my developers felt that was too restrictive, and if so,why? Thanks for all feedback.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:33 am
by The Phoenix
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can ... oftware.3F
Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software. They should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses available today. The licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative should be considered by you if you are licensing software or software documentation. Unlike our licenses -- which do not make mention of source or object code -- these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software.
(Emphasis mine)

GPL, LGPL, BSDL, or Apache.. I'm certain one of the major licenses should come close to meeting your needs. Explain what your needs are, so we can help discuss which license fits best.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:44 am
by Charles256
From the creative commons page
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
Pretty much sums up what I want to do. I don't so much care if people use it for commercial gain ( seeing as I used pre-exiting code that allows for commercial use ) I just don't want someone coming back and trying to claim my code as theirs and demanding I take it down. It sounds silly but if they copyright it and I don't it's remotely feasible. I also want my name to stay attached to the software in some form. The reason I'm doing this is to try to gain some familiarity in the open source community. I figured writing an open source app was a good start. :)

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:12 am
by The Phoenix
Charles256 wrote:From the creative commons page
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
Pretty much sums up what I want to do. I don't so much care if people use it for commercial gain ( seeing as I used pre-exiting code that allows for commercial use ) I just don't want someone coming back and trying to claim my code as theirs and demanding I take it down. It sounds silly but if they copyright it and I don't it's remotely feasible. I also want my name to stay attached to the software in some form. The reason I'm doing this is to try to gain some familiarity in the open source community. I figured writing an open source app was a good start. :)
That sounds closest to the BSD license. It basically just requires attribution.

However, that doesn't require them to 'share alike'. For that, you end up at the GPL.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:01 am
by onion2k
Creative Commons is ace.

As for a lightweight gallery.. I'm interested in seeing what that can do. I've written a basic on that's only 1 file. Not many features though, it just turns a directory of images into a gallery automagically. It does use Thickbox though, which is nice.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:10 am
by RobertGonzalez
I'm a proponent of CC as well. It is not restrictive, gives credit where credit is due and allows pretty free range of choice when it comes to doing things with the source of the thing you are licensing.

What the Pheonix was refering to is that a lot of artists (music, digitial, media, etc) are using CC right now, as it allows them to offer their works in a way that allows others to distribute it without limitation. I have seen this a lot more with music than anything, but it is making its way into software.

Be advised it is not as rock solid a license as many other "Built for software distribution" licenses. But it does offer some protection over proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:30 am
by Charles256
I may end up using GNU GPL. It looks pretty solid but I like how creative commons has their human readable pages. :-D
Onion: Mine will use lightbox v2. Fully category system along with full user management. Use a captcha system that's "free" for use. Also use the sha256 class for security purposes (It's been upgraded since the last time I downloaded it so it took me a moment to to figure out what was going on :) ) Will allowed upload of multiple image types and multiple images. (Looking into implementing the upload a zip file of photos and put them in in mass ) and trying to keep it down to under 150 files. So far, so good. Up to 50 files. I'm thinking of looking into using swiftmailer so that users (if they opt in ) can be notified of new pictures posting but I have to read into the terms of using swift mailer...And the last thing I have grabbed and am in the process of implementing is a javascript tree menu which is "free" to use and it degrades gracefully.

The end result will be valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and use CSS for ALL layout. I realized I used a lot of libraries but I made sure all the ones I'm using are "Free" in the sense mine will be so that if someone wants they can charge a million bucks to use it. What can I say? I've finally learned to work smarter, not harder. I'll keep everyone updated as it comes along ( i.e. when I release version .7)

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:42 pm
by The Phoenix
Charles256 wrote:I may end up using GNU GPL. It looks pretty solid but I like how creative commons has their human readable pages. :-D
They've got you covered:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:48 pm
by Charles256
You are my hero. :) Many thanks.