Follow us on Twitter
Do People Understand Free Licenses?
October 23rd, 2009 by Dario Solera | Filed under Off-Topic.Do people understand free licenses? Most importantly, do they understand the difference between the GPL, the Apache License, the BSD license? I don’t think so.
Why am I saying this?
You might be aware that I recently introduced an “Internal Usage” commercial license for ScrewTurn Wiki. It started as an experiment to see how many people would ask to purchase such license because their business isn’t compatible with the GPL. It turns out that there is roughly one request per week.
I’m generally a honest and fair person, so every time a user asks to purchase such a license, I invariably force them to notice that they can use and even modify the public packages for free, without any type of small print involved. I wouldn’t feel right selling them something that others get for free.
I’ve been surprised to know that quite a few managers or business owners in the software development field don’t even understand what the GPL is and what does it grants you to do. They’re ready to waste 100 Euros for getting even less than what is publicly available (commercial packages don’t include translations for example). It’s not much money, I know that, but what if it was 500€? or more? What if you’re doing the same mistake for many other applications, or even worse the mistake of not using a useful and perfectly suitable application because you’re afraid of its free license?
Guys, please, please spend a couple of hours studying the different free software licenses that the industry has agreed upon in the last several years. It’s very important for your business and, given the trends of the industry, you’ll probably have to deal with free software even more in the upcoming months and years.
New Posts
I’ll tell you what, if you don’t want the 100€, I’ll take it!
I’ll give half of it to charity in your name, and take the rest to explain the difference in licenses!
i’ll admit that i don’t understand free licenses or any licenses for that matter and why; because they’re confusing as hell. where can you find a clear and easy to follow matrix that lists the licenses and what you can and can’t do under them? i can’t find this anywhere and i’m not going to be spending hours on end trying to translate the legalese myself.
Tony, I couldn’t agree more with you on the licenses being confusing. I’ve been developing windows and web applications for over 15 years now, and I have had developers from small to big companies admit not knowing what the difference really is in the licenses. I’m lost for the most part also, so what i usually do or direct my teams do is just mention a few key points in plain english on what can or cannot be done under the license in question.