Permissive versus non-permissive licensing – why and what to pick?
If we boil down all the licenses out there, there is a general spectrum for the restrictions and responsibilities of the user of the open source code that spans from permissive usage to non-permissive or what is known as copyleft. More on what copyleft is can be found at https://copyleft.org/.
Richard Stallman, in defining what free software is, came up with several freedoms that were the cornerstone of defining the expectations of what free software is. After some evolution over time, the following four freedoms were established (starting its numbering from 0). The following work was adapted and modified from, under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license, https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source...
