Over the past few weeks, we have been learning about licensing and the different kinds and uses they all have. We have now even started to choose/implement our own inside our own group projects. In addition, the homework we did had to do with licenses. With so much already learned about licensing why would I gain from learning more about this topic? Sometimes when doing work in a time-constrained environment you don’t absorb all the information and with this being at my own pace I can review and learn new things I may have missed or not seen.
With all the information we have been learning about licenses you may think it’s hard to retain all this information but one key thing you should remember is that licenses can be split up into two categories copyleft licenses or permissive licenses. A copyleft license basically makes the modified open-source work be released under the same license. The original copyleft license is GPL (general public license) which means that any project using GPL must be open source as well. Another example of a copyleft license is LGPL (Lesser General Public License) is considered much more commercial-friendly than GPL because it has no requirements for software that only uses the license project. On the other side of the spectrum, there are permissive licenses that don’t put restrictions on people using a project. An example of a permissive license would be MIT which allows users to do whatever they want except they must contain the copyright statement and the original license. Even with all the possible choices for a license, you must ask yourself what your project needs and look at examples if ever stuck. Also, don’t forget to choose a license because this will cause much more harm you will restrict your code from being used by anyone except yourself.
Reading this article allowed me to see licenses in a more simple and enclosed way instead of being bombarded with multiple different licenses. Being able to split up licenses into categories in a concise way allowed me to see how licenses weren’t as complicated as I thought. Now when I am shown a license I can automatically put it in a category and understand the major functions of what restrictions may it have. Also, it is easier to know the purpose of my project and be able to pinpoint the exact license I may need. I know I make it sound simple but the process in itself can be overwhelming having a foundation can make the process not as nerve-racking.
https://www.codecademy.com/article/choosing-an-open-source-license
DCO 