April 13th 2009
The Free Software Definition
The GNU project publishes a list of four Freedoms and recommend a single license*, the GPL.
They claim the word “Free” for software available under the GPL.
Let us consider some developer freedoms, and some alternative licenses for blocks of code:
| Link / Use | Four boring freedoms | Reuse the code | Sue author | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proprietary | ✓ | |||
| GPL | ✓ | |||
| Freeware** | ✓ | |||
| LGPL | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| BSD/MIT/ISC/etc. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| PD/WTFPL***/etc. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Looking at this, it’s reasonably obvious to me which licenses offer the most Freedom to the developer; that being the BSD/MIT/ISC family.
These are the licenses I use personally, and the licenses I use to define Free Software; I don’t see how it can be taken any other way.
