Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

While the strategy to commoditize your product's complements is clever, doing so can be dangerous if you use a license that allows your competitors to take your work and run against you. When doing so, one should be careful to use licenses that can't be turned against _you_.

All MIT/BSD licenses can. All *GPLs, MPLs can't. The choice is clear.

From the projects he mentioned:

IBM (Linux): GPL Netscape/Mozilla (Mozilla/Gecko): MPL Transmeta (Linux): GPL Sun/HP (Gnome): GPL

There is a pattern to be seen: GPL licenses create vigorous diverse communities around them more easily than BSD-styled licenses.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: