Dru Lavigne wrote a blog entry on some of the dangers of using a GPL license vs. BSD, and links to this interesting story of how the University of Toronto found sticking to BSD licensing made software management easier. That article is from the October 2007 issue (“Licensing”) of the Open Source Business Resource; I’ve linked to the OSBR before, but not that issue.
2 Replies to “GPL dangers; BSD benefits”
Comments are closed.
The OSBR article makes absolutely no mention of the GPL (at least not in the page linked). I think it is more of a warning against dual licensing software (without copyright assignment) than it is is evidence of GPL dangers.
Certainly if your aim is widest spread adoption then a BSD/MIT licence makes the most sense. However I question the value of dual licensing BSD code whereas given the “forced freedom” of the GPL it can certainly make sense to have the code available under another license.
Anonymous – It’s Dru’s blog entry that talks about issues around the GPL. The OSBR article is something she also linked to that I thought was worthwhile. The OSBR issue it’s in does have a specific GPL vs BSD comparison.