Hi, I'm in the last stages (testing and documentation) of completing a nice library that I'm sure will be useful to many developers in game development and other areas, if they care for what this library purposes to do. My intent is to release this library as open source or public domain so that anyone can use it and to get, hopefully, some peer review or have other developers add code to it for the benefit of improving the code and my own know how. This is were it gets complicated. My first idea was to release it with no copyright notice and just see what happens, but after taking a look at the more popular open source licenses the doubts came. Does anyone here has any experience with open source licenses ? What should I be looking at?? My code is all made from scratch, so i don't have to follow some or other licensing and i don't want to make my projects usable only on other open source projects. Thanks

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

and also

http://creativecommons.org/

GPL is not what I'm looking for because i don't want to force users of my code to release their source code too.

CC has many licensing options but i didn't yet found one that suits my needs, it seems more oriented towards complete works than a library.

I always just go with the MIT License. Very short and to the point. Gives them rights to do just about anything with it while still requiring that you get credit.

If you've created something that's truly useful and which isn't going to become some sort of a standard I would create a dual licensing solution. This way if people make money off of your work you get some back. It's only fair IMO. Make it free for non-profit open source use and offer an alternative commercial license for those that want closed source. Corporations won't mind paying for quality work, many actually prefer to do so, and with the open free option they can evaluate it and make sure it will fit well with their software before paying you.

I release all my open-source code into the public domain. The MIT license is roughly equivalent.

The three most common licenses that have very little restrictions are MIT, BSD, and zlib. There are slight differences (mostly about attribution), but the basics are all the same.

LGPL is hugely problematic because it's viral. BSD is probably my favorite for simple, to the point open source.

I wrote about OSL's a while a back, feel free to check them out.

Open Source FAQ part I , and Part II .

Best of luck!

Quote: LGPL is hugely problematic because it's viral.

What makes you say that? The only "viral" nature of the LGPL that I am aware of is that it requires changes to the library to be made public; while the OP said he doesn't want the user to have to publish their code, he said nothing about library alterations. (The library replacement clause doesn't strike me as "viral", and it's the only other thing I can think of...)

The LGPL's what I'd recommend for any sort of library, really. It forces changes to the core library itself to remain open, which is a Good Thing, but lets developers keep their own code closed.

Quote: I release all my open-source code into the public domain. The MIT license is roughly equivalent.

This isn't really true. Exerting no copyright is very different from permissively licensing your copyright. I get what you're saying, but there's a pretty wide difference.

Quote: CC has many licensing options but i didn't yet found one that suits my needs, it seems more oriented towards complete works than a library.

The Creative Commons licenses aren't generally used for software, AFAIK; Creative Commons even uses GPL and LGPL for their own code, as you can see here.

Quote: Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distribution. -- Craig Mundie on Shared Source

While this is obviously less of a problem for LPGL, it's been argued that a problem could exist if the library is incorporated into GPL software.

One of the biggest drawbacks of both GPL and LGPL is the fact that they're so complicated. Most lawyers have a hard time understanding the specific IP implications. This makes a lot of developers very hesitant to combine GPL code or LGPL libraries into their own works, for fear that their licenses may create a conflict.