License Choosing
I read one good discussion of some licensing troubles between KDE and Debian, I found it very interesting as Gimp and ![[WWW]](/wiki/modern/img/moin-www.png){kind=small}
KDE have had similar problems. In an attempt to avoid this whole business and get on with making a cool graphic arts application that can suit everyones needs, I went to the CreativeCommonsMenu and selected each combination of options to see what could be had, licensewise. I think it meets everyones needs and we can get on with other things.
TheGIMP is free and should stay free. The software and people it supports the most should be free like TheGIMP. The nice thing about the Creative Commons License is that it is written fairly simply and the choices are very easy to figure out. Many, many of these little selection and choice questionaires throughout my life have failed to offer me what I needed. CreativeCommons was not like this though. I have not determined a license that I would need that is not here. I thought about trying to make a living writing free software, trying to get access to information and tools if you are economically distressed; about trying to make a living selling fonts; and about who a free very cool web site should help the most while I looked at the licenses available (ie, I selected each possible combination and tried to figure out when and where it would work).
--carol
Note: Some of this material isn't quite right, legally speaking. I've fixed a bit, but its not perfect yet. Please look at gnu.org and creativecommons.org to understand some of the concepts. --Luke Stodola
Public Domain
This is the license that says (to me) "I think that my software/art is good enough to change the world for the better and that it is so important that equal access will be made to it. I am just this cool and sure of myself and this code or work of art".
By Attribution
You continue to get credit. You want to see your name continue on in the software you contributed to, perhaps started even.
I would want this license. I would like to see my name on some of this software that is changing this world and slowly, beautifully and elegantly making the world into a better place to live. I would like to read your name if you are good enough to contribute. I am not so humble or self-assured that I can leave my name off my work; I would never expect you to either.
This license allows people to build upon your work, alter it (nice if technology changes and that happens sometimes) and use it to make a living maybe. Somebody can take your work and redistribute it under a different license if they wish. This is similar to the revised BSD license in software.
It does not insist that the author/artist/contributer never get paid. Just because you can use it for free does not mean that you have to, by the way.
Non Commercial
You may not use this licensed code/art for profit. But you can use it at home; and maybe you can use it to the point where you start to profit. You should share at the point you start to make the money, however.
This license does not require that the author/artist/contributor get credit for their work.
No Derivs
This is a great one if you really like how it came out. Maybe it is a logic you want to preserve; perhaps it is a font. Sometimes the way it is done is more important to preserve than anything. However, like music; there is a chance it will not live on this way. I remember songs when someone new freshens them up and re-presents them to me. Also, people don't have to give you credit, but the licensed code/art stays in tact. This might be nice on an image archive for public use, actually. You can put your name in it; most of the people who pay for software cannot afford the software to take the comment out of the image; the people who don't pay can and the people who pay a lot can. Interesting.
This license would be helpful if you wanted to contribute to TheGIMP without your boss knowing about it. I cannot come up with any good reasons for this as my bosses have all been fairly decent and I never felt a reason to hide from them. It is still here if you need it, however. The contribution would not come back to haunt you in the future either as you did not allow it to be altered (or updated). This could be a handy little option.
Share Alike
The Share Alike provision requires that derivative works are distributed under the same license ("share and share alike"). This prevents someone from taking your free work, modifying it a bit, and making the result non-free. Unfortunately, they cannot add _any_ restrictions, even ones that would keep the work free. For example, they could not require attribution, even to them, on the modified work. Since people generallly want attribution ("credit"), consideru using the Attribution ShareAlike license instead.
To use work under this license, You just need to make sure the free part stays free and the source that was available to you for free is still available to others for free.
By Attribution-Non-Comercial
HowBadlyDoYouNeedThis
more to follow.