Just stick with the BSD license then. It´s basically about "Do whatever you want with it. And If it eats your dog, it´s not our fault. If you give it to someone else, you have to inculde this statement".
@@michaelheimbrand5424 GPL is the gold standard The BSD license is anti-FOSS, it's basically a giant sign that says "come rob us blind" (same with MIT & others of the sort)
One note about X11 and the MIT license: X11 technically uses its own license for the project, but in effect it is exactly the same as the MIT license, just with more weird verbosity.
"you give up all copyrights (well, as much as the law allows)" It doesn't the Bern convention basically means both that copyright is automatic, and that you can't give up your copyright even if you want to.
@` I also like short licenses, but I do admire the work that went into the CC0 to use every legal loophole to provide the greatest freedom possible. Two fallback layers, two severability clauses, it really is a fine piece of legal engineering.
I just want to add, that no matter which license a software has, you only need to give the source code out, if you actually give them the software. And then also only to these people, you don't need to make a public download place available. You cannot stop the people you gave the software and source code to tho, to not redistribute it (under some licenses, like GPL). But you DON'T need to give people the source code to your software, if they got it via a third party. E.g. A gives software (s) and source code (sc) to B. Then B gives s to C. A does not need to the sc to C, only B needs to.
Huh? I still don't get it. What I grasp is that you just give the modified source code to the original owner and no need to put it on a website downloadable to other people. Am I right?
@@noel_curray If you upstream your changes (which includes a merge), you can obviously just point to that site. But that is not what I was talking about.
@@noel_curray No. You don't need to give the modified source to the original owner. You need to give it to everyone you ever gave a binary to (if they ask).
The purpose of the BSD license is "don't sue us", that the original writers are not responsible for your use of the software nor any possible harm resulting from it. I license everything I do online with BSD.
dude: MacOS is into BSD family, the userland and half kernel is itself FreeBSD...BSD is "you can use but you need to quoting us"! really, MacOS IS the best example and IS the only certified Unix right now...why don't they use the BSD license? they don't want, but they can. Apple itself use Apache License for its Swift and GNU and BSD licenses for Web Kit...I ever pretty disliked GNU licenses!!! Apple is nowdays what was the Sun Microsystem....as a person could say "i don't want buy a sun workstation" nowdays you can not buy a Mac but is undoubtfully that they work is deeply helping open suorce to grow much more than Red Hat and Canonical and Android. Swift undoubtfully will be the future of coding, it is cross platform and easy and webkit is what we use for everything and right now you are using web kit...Apple is bad for many stuffs, it never gave enuff quote to FreeBSD and that's an example but her development at least is free to copy. For the close suorce neither Unix was open and surely SUn Microsystem wasn't open suorce.
I have created multiple open source games! :) Licensing the content (art, story, etc) never came to mind until recently, all of these licensing stuff is quite complex, I'm glad videos like these exist to help clear up some things! I have already released many of my content, videos, etc under CC as well! :D
If it's not too much to ask I have a question. I'm starting to develop a game while learning the ropes. It might be sellable if I finish it, but I care more about making it open-source and protect authorship. I understand that likely nobody will be interested anyway, but I would consider figuring out the licensing a part of the process of learning the ropes. I understand that third-party graphic and sound assets, if I buy some, probably will be covered under creative commons, but I'm not sure how to choose a license for my own work. Since you obviously have more experience with that, maybe you can suggest, what I could use? From what I understood it would be GPLv3, but I'm not sure if it allows for usage of base engine protected under MIT.
@@L1vv4n I'm no lawyer or professional when it comes to licensing, but here's my two cents: When it comes to purchased assets, it's possible they are NOT an open license. They could be licensed to you, but disallow sub-licensing. You could still use these assets in an open source project if they were turned into their own separate blob of sorts. Sort of like how Quake and it's assets are separated (open source code, with map data being 'sold separately'). When it comes to your own projects where you own 100% of everything, I think you'll want to separate your project into two licenses, one for your assets (which can be a CC license) and one for your code (could be a GPL or MIT license). As long as it's clear what's licensed under what and if both allow for the freedoms you want for your project and for others. There's an element of license compatibility where some licenses don't play nice with others, but sometimes being clever with how you split up and package your software can be all the difference! Of course, it's always important to do your own spesific research too! :) TL;DR - Separate license for assets and code - Check license compatibility with other licenses - Do your own research, as it depends on what freedoms you want to give. Personally I use: Code: GPLv3 Assets: CC BY-SA 4.0 Various sources and information: creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses choosealicense.com/ blueoakcouncil.org/license/1.0.0 (used by oh-my-git) This person was suggested to just use GPLv3 for both the software and the art assets. (check for more info) softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/297102/licensing-for-artistic-work-used-inside-gplv3-licensed-software A nifty reddit post with nifty opinions. www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/19h2ke/why_not_to_use_creative_commons/
One of the best explanation. I see why the BSD fans like to say it's license makes the code more free, but it's just the freedom of the developer. I'd rather think that the GPL is about the freedom of the users, don't know if it's that clearly black and white.
@@scottfranco1962 Under the BSD license you can make your code proprietary, which won't guarantee that the user's freedom will be honored in that code. Not to mention you won't be able to tell if that's true or not since you can't review it, but the same goes to the other licenses that allow free and opensource code to be made into proprietary (or at least the changes).
@@kaalsemulzii1920 Its impossible to make the code proprietary by a third party. The code was published (and publishing is an important part of it). If the "proprietary" party wants to make it proprietary, they can certainly do that with their modifications, or even change it all around. But they would "own" only the changes they made. The original source code cannot be made proprietary, and it is always available (as long as, again, it was published in the first place). Patents are a different issue (and I am against software patents absolutely). But for copyright law this holds true. As a publisher under the BSD licence, the "disadvantage" certainly is that people don't feel the need to advise me of bugs they encountered, or their fixes. But that isn't their being proprietary, just not being very grateful to getting the source code for free in the first place. I have had people take and change my work around, then publish it. I'm fine with that. I had one author publish an add on that I found useful, but he had changed my original work to make his add on work. I asked him to change his work to be compatible with mine, and he told me he was satisfied with it and didn't want to work on it further. I liked the idea of what he did but not the implementation. So I wrote my own. Nobody was put out by that arrangement. Do I find my work around the internet? You betcha. In one case it was published in a magazine article. They never told me, I found it on my own (I personally always send a thank you note to people whose software I use). It was a great article. I recently found a package I like published by an author in CERN. They said they used it to find the Higgs boson. I sent a thank you note to the authors and offered to send them the improvements I made. Now lets contrast that with the LGPL. FIrst of all, I have no issue with others licences. If a software author says you have to stand on one foot and sing "hari Krishna" while using their software, then I say do it or don't use the software. They wrote it, they have the rights. The great thing about GNU is I have access to everything. If I have a serious issue interfacing to a LGPLed package, I have all their source. Its great. I can even compile their module and debug their software and mine together. Everything I do is BSD licenced. That means, since I provide the source of my code, according to the LGPL (and GPL) I can combine them any way I like. However, if I see a package that solves my needs (like the CERN software) that is licenced with BSD, MIT or similar licenced, I will use that instead. Why? Simple. I have no issue with a company taking my software and incorporating it into a product. However, building my software with dependencies on GPLed or even LGPLed code means my company oriented users cannot use my code, either. I basically inherit the GPL licence by association. This would mean that I would try to make the linkage to the GPL package modular, so my users can replace it, or gain the advantage of the LGPL. However, I have never done that (to date) simply because alternative licences now are widespread, and my of my users I suspect are of a like mind with me. I can usually find a low restriction licence package that will do the job. Examples are the OpenSSL package (great package BTW), and recently the company I work for chose the MBEDTLS package, also free for commercial use, because it has an ARM implementation. And the work I am doing for them is being published under a BSD type license as well (as is most of what they make). So why do I make open source software at all? Well actually I have always written software on the side. Its how I learned to program. I do it for fun, to solve issues I want solved, and to write software no company would allow me to program. For example I write compilers and operating systems for fun. Try and find THAT job description out there (it exists, but it is rare, and usually it is for GCC/LLVM specialists - I like my own code better). I should end by emphasizing the above point "as long as you have published your software". There used to be a lot of fights over software that boiled down to "you can't PROVE when you owned/published the software". Xwindows itself was such a fight (the backing store patent with AT&T - although, again, that was a patent fight). Nowadays you have AMAZING resources to publish code. I put my code on two different GIT servers, Github and Sourceforge. They will essentially stay there forever, and they have running audit trails with them. When the code was first published. Notes for each change that was committed. If someone tries to sue me for copyright or patent violations, all of the proof is there online and documented. Thus I would say to anyone considering publishing your software under a free licence, do it early and do it often. open source software is, indeed different than proprietary software. It wants and NEEDS to be seen.
@@scottfranco1962 Ok, thanks for the explanation. But can those changes contain code that would effect my privacy in any waa as a user? Also, what about DRM? Does the BSD license allow it, or even talk about it? (Honestly I just want to be informed on the matter.)
@Fashinqu A. I assume the program was functional before it fell out of maintenance. I further assume that "it cannot work" means that it cannot work with new versions of the OS? Other packages? Not sure why the situation is any different with the GPL or similar. You can't force people to work on your project, especially if you won't. If the software is/was popular, people will step up and fix it. If not, then the software is dead.
For the React, it contains the patent trap underneath the open source surface. If the company uses the React, it means this company is willing to share the usage of all the patents to the Facebook(Meta).
Weeeell, probably not. While I am not a lawyer, i found an article a little while back while researching a licence drama within our open source community, which stated that licences are not contracts, they are not two-way binding agreements, a quid-pro-quo. You can set terms within a licence, of course, but those terms merely set out how people can use, modify, [re]distribute your work without committing copyright infringement... and that's it. If you are right about those patent terms within React's licence then theoretically Facebook could take a company to court for copyright infringement if they refuse to share their patents, but it would be up to the judge to decide, and more than likely Facebook would just get a damages payout instead of getting ownership or even access to those patents.
There's one important detail missing about the LGPL: you can use an LGPL licensed project to create your own closed source (or proprietary) software. That is the case with Qt, it doesn't really stop you from making proprietary apps with its LGPL modules, and this is true of KDE software too. You just need to obey to the license's restrictions, which includes for instance providing the source code of the LGPL software used by your app (not your app's source code, unless certain conditions apply). You can even statically compile your proprietary application with LGPL libraries, counter to what may be seen in forums sometimes, as long as you provide the object files needed to relink with the user's version of that LGPL library. See: the GPL FAQ, section "LGPLStaticVsDynamic", and Qt's "Obligations of the GPL and LGPL". (TH-cam doesn't seem to like links, so this comment got removed yesterday and I had to repost). In this respect I'd say it's waaaaay more permissive than GPL.
You should have talked about multi license projects too. Because you can license the project under multiple licenses, where the user can choose one. This is often done with Open Source license and a Proprietary version. Last but not least, everyone can just write their own license instead using a preexisting one.
Yes, but it makes no sense at all. A lot of drivers are dual GPL/BSD. What does that mean? The BSD restrictions are much lower than GPL. It basically negates the GPL.
@@scottfranco1962 You just choose one license. If the GPL in example is not possible, then you can use the other licensed publication. That is in example how some Steam games or applications can be released. They are normally licensed as GPL and that is not compatible with the Steamworks proprietary blob, if they want make use of it. That's just one example when dual licensing can be useful. I think this dual licensing is usually achieved by releasing the code two times with the different licenses. I never dive in into this materia too much, but that is basically how it works.
@@thingsiplay This can be difficult because you also have to handle who owns the copyright of the code. By default in all of these licenses, the author of that line of code owns the copyright for that code and can refuse to allow it be distributed under the proprietary license. This is a reason Contributor License Agreements have come along which assign the copyright to the maintainer of the repository instead.
@@flagrama That is true and often a problem if this was not handled from the beginning. In example RetroArch has to handle each of its cores (plugins to use the emulators) individually, because every single of them have its own licenses. They needed to contact everyone before they could add it to Steam, with the proprietary Steamworks blob integrated. Contributor License Agreements is a different story. They take the code and can do whatever they want. The contributor has no rights and basically gives the code to them. It has its own problems, but can solve some issues.
I don't have a problem with copyleft in general, but GPL's requirement to distribute dependency source code can get messy with package managers (as in npm, pip, etc.). I guess rust handles this best because it compiles packages from source anyways so vendoring source code is a thing.
“Don’t HESITATE to like, subscribe, turn on notifications…” 😃 This is the first time I understood what you’ve been saying all this time. Great job articulating a fairly complex topic in a digestible manner! 👍🏻
In addition to different types, there are also multiple versions of CC license (higher version number = more restrictive), so there’s even more fragmentation than was mentioned in this video
That's very informative. I've been recently wondering from where and where not to copy codes for my projects, and you hit me at the right time. Although I still am not confident this at least provides me a direction in which to look for.
Even if your videos are CC-NC-SA, if I were to use about 5 seconds or less of your "is GNOME user friendly" video to make a video about which DE is the best for beginners and I use that short clip as a testimony that GNOME may not be the best DE for Windows users switching to Linux, would that be considered fair use and thus not covered under copyright/copyleft?
The easy difference between GPL and MIT. 1) GNU protect the users so they always can get the source and change the software. 2) BSD/MIT protect the programmer from being sued. Anyone can do anything, as long they have MIT license. That is why MS had BSD license in their product for a long time. Because they used BSD network code. The last you said is important. OSS and Free software doesn't make it banned to earn money on selling the software, but the "proper" way of earn money is by selling support (like installing or develop features).
i think the GPL is best for protection,though im mixed on creative commons licenses that don't permit distributing modifications,that seems very restrictive to me for a license that's being put next to true free software licenses.
GPL is great for standalone applications imo, but absolutely catastrophic as a library licence... and people will just ignore it... look at Bukkit for example. Bukkit is GPLv3 but you wouldn't know it given how seemingly most Bukkit plugins out there are closed source or permissively open sourced, which then creates its own linking problems, because who's going to check the licences of the dependences of their dependencies? GPL libraries are a copyright explosion waiting to happen, indeed Bukkit has already had a massive copyright drama _thanks to GPLv3._ As Felix Reda said in their "Julia Reda: Correcting copywrongs" talk in 2014: _"The only reason the [copyright] system hasn't collapsed is that the vast majority creators actually don't enforce their rights."_
@John Smith The problem with 'no derivatives' is that translations are considered derivatives meaning that no one is allowed to translate your work to other languages.
I used to license my code under a triple license, GPL, LGPL, MPL. That seemed like a good idea, until I worked for Google and wanted to use my own project in my work, and the triple license made it a legal nightmare. Google recommended the Apache license, as it basically did what the triple license model was trying to do. Relicensing a project with a bunch of contributors is a giant pain in the ass, because you have to get permission from every contributor to relicense their contributions.
@@softwarelivre2389 The whoooole point of GPL is to coerce any and all projects it touches into also being GPL. Google _could've_ used his projects just fine, the problem is that they didn't want their projects to also become GPL.
@@lodgin that point applies is when you have derived work, but if you're just using the tool, the GPL is the license that better protects the end user's rights.
Common Clause only apply to the software itself not the derivatives. You can use a common clause software in a proprietary software or build on top of it and still allowed to sell it. What you can't do is to just take the common clause software and sell it as-is. You need to make a value out of it to be able sell it.
You forgot MPL 2.0 (used by Firefox), that is one of the best licenses. Non-viral copyleft license that can replace Apache 2.0 in almost everything without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Believe or not, today when I traveling to home from the work, I thought "hmm.. I need to watch a video about software licensing", and boom I have a software license explaining video on my TH-cam recommendation now.
lets all agree, WTFPL is the best license out there. trying to follow the GPL or apache or BSD and such licenses is headache, like come on, WTFPL is the most freedom based.
@@Cuperino well, you could simply add the no warranty as the WTFPL website says, and that will make it safe :P no need to copy the license into each source file, like imagine how much KBs you save if you have a large software. xD
french{digeste} -> english{digestible} (both adj used for food and concepts) | english{a digest (ie a summary)} -> french{résumé}, eg: fr{Ce livre propose un résumé de tout ce que l'on sait sur le sujet.}->en{This book provides a digest of everything that is known on the subject.} (english pronunciation {DIE-jest})
I was looking at licenses a few months ago. I was looking for a license to put the code in the equivalent to public domain. I looked at Creative Commons - CC0, Apache v.2 and Zero-Clause BSD. Could you do a video on that kind of license specifically?
I disagree with your assertion that CC is “fragmented”. I would argue it is much less fragmented than open source licenses, since they all exist under one organization. And the licenses are all just modifications of each other, not completely different. I think giving all that choice in this context is a very good thing. And CC has “license choosers” on their website to make decoding all the legal jargon that differs the licenses very easy.
As a normal person, how can I use this licenses? When I personalized others source code, should I go to a place or a lawyer and let them do the licensing and stuff?
You should know that other youtubers do have the right to use short clips of your videos if their work is transformative under the fair use act, i.e. they produce something that is not derivative but critiques your video for example.
I was looking for a video for explaining the different licenses so i could use them in my projects and i got this notification. I was like: Ok Mind Reader. Great Video man. Fedoras Off
A question about the Apache 2.0 software license: If I used a software with that license and generated, say, a figure with that software. Is the generated figure also free to be sold by me in my products?
I’m surprised apache is more popular than MIT. Maybe it’s a lot of older project that used Apache because MIT license really gotten popular during last decade
Hi thank you for the explanations, Quick question about software licenced under AGPL-3.0 license. My question is, can I use images generated by this software for stuff like publishing books, POD, and other commercial things? The license stuff says I can share and modify the software, but what about the images it spits out? Do they need the same AGPL-3.0 treatment even if I'm trying to make some money off them? Any info you can share would be awesome. Maybe point me to some docs or stuff about using AGPL-3.0 stuff commercially? Thanks a bunch!
11:19 ok, and how about embedding of yt videos, like yours. If the author allows to do embedding of the yt video, can I use it on commercial website, where I would use this video as a base to ask questions and give answers? Or this case would require the author to give permission? What if the user would use this embedding video link and make a use of it on my commercial questions-answers website without my knowledge? (the website will allow to embed any video link)
Thanks for another great video man. Your channel is one of the better ones for info about FOSS. There are other good ones too, but there are some stinkers out there who just like to spread anger and disinfo somewhat. Not here though, just really good news and info. Keep up the good work!
Regarding CC licenses, ShareAlike and NoDerivs are mutually exclusive. If you use the NoDerivs element, then others cannot share modifications they've made to your work, making ShareAlike redundant. So there's no such thing as a CC BY-NC-SA-ND license, as you suggest at 11:09.
Also I have no idea who Baby Wogue is or how they're using your likeness in their videos, but that can't necessarily be prohibited by CC BY-NC, especially if your videos haven't been clearly marked as such. Using someone's image or likeness, or even a snippet of a CC BY-NC video could be a fair use, depending on how they used it. If they're using your image to impersonate you or slander you, then it's not a copyright issue but a violation of your publicity rights (and TH-cam's terms).
I guess all licenses have their place. I´m rather biased on BSD´s. And one nice example of what the BSD-license made possible is that a lot of closed source cra..*eehm* "stuff" is better because of the BSD license. Michael W Lucas once said (something like): "Imagine the scale of human suffering if Microsoft instead decided to make their own ip stack". (They took it from one of the BSD´s and closed sourced it of course). And to be fair, I guess the ip stack is one of few things that doesn´t break a lot in Windows. And then we have MacOS with a lot of BSD stuff. Apples Airport things that runs NeBSD, Playstation (FreeBSD) and I think a lot of other network equipment that runs *BSD OS:es. I think of it like that BSD is the only truly free and open license. Yes it permits companies to do bad stuff. But "free" and "open" is all about permission. Yes GPL is better for keeping open stuff open. But where we still don´t see the year of the Linux desktop, the "year of the UNIX desktop" has been around with MacOS since 2000. So you gotta ask yourself. Which is best? That Windows remain the same OS/2 clone crap forever or they change to a Linux base? Well they can´t if they like to stay closed. But they CAN if they base a new Windows on FreeBSD. And that´s what I´m on about. It´s better for everyone if bad people like MS can do better stuff and still being bad, than if they have to be bad people using bad stuff. I´m not against GPL & co at all. I just think of it as "if you can´t beat them, join them". And if sharing is caring, you shouldn´t exclude the mean kids.
Linux is GPLv2. You MUST send your modifications back to the maintainer under GPLv2, I believe. Linus Torvalds has gone on record stating that GPLv3 is something he does not like.
Does using a library with its license is equal to making changes to it? If you are using a lot of packages in our project (dotnet and npm) but only consume those. Is it required to mention something then? Especially in the MIT and Apache 2.0, that I expected to be just fine as a consumer only.
I have a question which may seem very fundamental but I really do not know: Does the license give contributors/users right from the original author, or restrict it? In other words: when you dont include a license as an author, do users have all rights because there are no "rules", or do they have no rights because there is no explicitly specified permission?
Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: www.linode.com/linuxexperiment
Foss licenses have always made my head spin more than the technicalities between various distributions
at least it's waaaaay more readable than proprietary ones, LOL
Just stick with the BSD license then. It´s basically about "Do whatever you want with it. And If it eats your dog, it´s not our fault. If you give it to someone else, you have to inculde this statement".
When in doubt, choose the GNU General Public License 3.0 or later
@@michaelheimbrand5424 GPL is the gold standard
The BSD license is anti-FOSS, it's basically a giant sign that says "come rob us blind" (same with MIT & others of the sort)
GPL3 or greater is a good default option, so is BSD, especially if you think you might monetize it in the future
One note about X11 and the MIT license: X11 technically uses its own license for the project, but in effect it is exactly the same as the MIT license, just with more weird verbosity.
Huh, what is going on with your profile picture?
@@paulhorbenko9560
Black
-v
that's so x11
Yea
Another interesting license is Creative Commons Zero (CC0). When using the license, you give up all copyrights (well, as much as the law allows).
"you give up all copyrights (well, as much as the law allows)" It doesn't the Bern convention basically means both that copyright is automatic, and that you can't give up your copyright even if you want to.
@` I also like short licenses, but I do admire the work that went into the CC0 to use every legal loophole to provide the greatest freedom possible. Two fallback layers, two severability clauses, it really is a fine piece of legal engineering.
I just want to add, that no matter which license a software has, you only need to give the source code out, if you actually give them the software. And then also only to these people, you don't need to make a public download place available.
You cannot stop the people you gave the software and source code to tho, to not redistribute it (under some licenses, like GPL). But you DON'T need to give people the source code to your software, if they got it via a third party. E.g. A gives software (s) and source code (sc) to B. Then B gives s to C. A does not need to the sc to C, only B needs to.
True!
Huh? I still don't get it. What I grasp is that you just give the modified source code to the original owner and no need to put it on a website downloadable to other people. Am I right?
@@noel_curray If you upstream your changes (which includes a merge), you can obviously just point to that site.
But that is not what I was talking about.
@@noel_curray No. You don't need to give the modified source to the original owner. You need to give it to everyone you ever gave a binary to (if they ask).
@@Leseratte If they ask...?
The purpose of the BSD license is "don't sue us", that the original writers are not responsible for your use of the software nor any possible harm resulting from it. I license everything I do online with BSD.
dude: MacOS is into BSD family, the userland and half kernel is itself FreeBSD...BSD is "you can use but you need to quoting us"!
really, MacOS IS the best example and IS the only certified Unix right now...why don't they use the BSD license? they don't want, but they can.
Apple itself use Apache License for its Swift and GNU and BSD licenses for Web Kit...I ever pretty disliked GNU licenses!!! Apple is nowdays what was the Sun Microsystem....as a person could say "i don't want buy a sun workstation" nowdays you can not buy a Mac but is undoubtfully that they work is deeply helping open suorce to grow much more than Red Hat and Canonical and Android.
Swift undoubtfully will be the future of coding, it is cross platform and easy and webkit is what we use for everything and right now you are using web kit...Apple is bad for many stuffs, it never gave enuff quote to FreeBSD and that's an example but her development at least is free to copy.
For the close suorce neither Unix was open and surely SUn Microsystem wasn't open suorce.
I have created multiple open source games! :)
Licensing the content (art, story, etc) never came to mind until recently,
all of these licensing stuff is quite complex, I'm glad videos like these exist to help clear up some things!
I have already released many of my content, videos, etc under CC as well! :D
If it's not too much to ask I have a question.
I'm starting to develop a game while learning the ropes. It might be sellable if I finish it, but I care more about making it open-source and protect authorship.
I understand that likely nobody will be interested anyway, but I would consider figuring out the licensing a part of the process of learning the ropes.
I understand that third-party graphic and sound assets, if I buy some, probably will be covered under creative commons, but I'm not sure how to choose a license for my own work.
Since you obviously have more experience with that, maybe you can suggest, what I could use?
From what I understood it would be GPLv3, but I'm not sure if it allows for usage of base engine protected under MIT.
@@L1vv4n
I'm no lawyer or professional when it comes to licensing, but here's my two cents:
When it comes to purchased assets, it's possible they are NOT an open license. They could be licensed to you, but disallow sub-licensing. You could still use these assets in an open source project if they were turned into their own separate blob of sorts. Sort of like how Quake and it's assets are separated (open source code, with map data being 'sold separately').
When it comes to your own projects where you own 100% of everything, I think you'll want to separate your project into two licenses, one for your assets (which can be a CC license) and one for your code (could be a GPL or MIT license).
As long as it's clear what's licensed under what and if both allow for the freedoms you want for your project and for others.
There's an element of license compatibility where some licenses don't play nice with others, but sometimes being clever with how you split up and package your software can be all the difference!
Of course, it's always important to do your own spesific research too! :)
TL;DR
- Separate license for assets and code
- Check license compatibility with other licenses
- Do your own research, as it depends on what freedoms you want to give.
Personally I use:
Code: GPLv3
Assets: CC BY-SA 4.0
Various sources and information:
creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses
choosealicense.com/
blueoakcouncil.org/license/1.0.0 (used by oh-my-git)
This person was suggested to just use GPLv3 for both the software and the art assets. (check for more info)
softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/297102/licensing-for-artistic-work-used-inside-gplv3-licensed-software
A nifty reddit post with nifty opinions.
www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/19h2ke/why_not_to_use_creative_commons/
@@elatronion Thanks for the detailed answer!
This is by far the best video that explains the open source licenses. You are a good teacher. Big like to your video!
Thanks :)
One of the best explanation. I see why the BSD fans like to say it's license makes the code more free, but it's just the freedom of the developer. I'd rather think that the GPL is about the freedom of the users, don't know if it's that clearly black and white.
What freedom have you lost (as a user) with the BSD?
@@scottfranco1962 Under the BSD license you can make your code proprietary, which won't guarantee that the user's freedom will be honored in that code. Not to mention you won't be able to tell if that's true or not since you can't review it, but the same goes to the other licenses that allow free and opensource code to be made into proprietary (or at least the changes).
@@kaalsemulzii1920 Its impossible to make the code proprietary by a third party. The code was published (and publishing is an important part of it). If the "proprietary" party wants to make it proprietary, they can certainly do that with their modifications, or even change it all around. But they would "own" only the changes they made. The original source code cannot be made proprietary, and it is always available (as long as, again, it was published in the first place).
Patents are a different issue (and I am against software patents absolutely). But for copyright law this holds true.
As a publisher under the BSD licence, the "disadvantage" certainly is that people don't feel the need to advise me of bugs they encountered, or their fixes. But that isn't their being proprietary, just not being very grateful to getting the source code for free in the first place. I have had people take and change my work around, then publish it. I'm fine with that. I had one author publish an add on that I found useful, but he had changed my original work to make his add on work. I asked him to change his work to be compatible with mine, and he told me he was satisfied with it and didn't want to work on it further. I liked the idea of what he did but not the implementation. So I wrote my own. Nobody was put out by that arrangement.
Do I find my work around the internet? You betcha. In one case it was published in a magazine article. They never told me, I found it on my own (I personally always send a thank you note to people whose software I use). It was a great article.
I recently found a package I like published by an author in CERN. They said they used it to find the Higgs boson. I sent a thank you note to the authors and offered to send them the improvements I made.
Now lets contrast that with the LGPL. FIrst of all, I have no issue with others licences. If a software author says you have to stand on one foot and sing "hari Krishna" while using their software, then I say do it or don't use the software. They wrote it, they have the rights. The great thing about GNU is I have access to everything. If I have a serious issue interfacing to a LGPLed package, I have all their source. Its great. I can even compile their module and debug their software and mine together.
Everything I do is BSD licenced. That means, since I provide the source of my code, according to the LGPL (and GPL) I can combine them any way I like. However, if I see a package that solves my needs (like the CERN software) that is licenced with BSD, MIT or similar licenced, I will use that instead. Why?
Simple. I have no issue with a company taking my software and incorporating it into a product. However, building my software with dependencies on GPLed or even LGPLed code means my company oriented users cannot use my code, either. I basically inherit the GPL licence by association. This would mean that I would try to make the linkage to the GPL package modular, so my users can replace it, or gain the advantage of the LGPL. However, I have never done that (to date) simply because alternative licences now are widespread, and my of my users I suspect are of a like mind with me. I can usually find a low restriction licence package that will do the job. Examples are the OpenSSL package (great package BTW), and recently the company I work for chose the MBEDTLS package, also free for commercial use, because it has an ARM implementation. And the work I am doing for them is being published under a BSD type license as well (as is most of what they make).
So why do I make open source software at all? Well actually I have always written software on the side. Its how I learned to program. I do it for fun, to solve issues I want solved, and to write software no company would allow me to program. For example I write compilers and operating systems for fun. Try and find THAT job description out there (it exists, but it is rare, and usually it is for GCC/LLVM specialists - I like my own code better).
I should end by emphasizing the above point "as long as you have published your software". There used to be a lot of fights over software that boiled down to "you can't PROVE when you owned/published the software". Xwindows itself was such a fight (the backing store patent with AT&T - although, again, that was a patent fight). Nowadays you have AMAZING resources to publish code. I put my code on two different GIT servers, Github and Sourceforge. They will essentially stay there forever, and they have running audit trails with them. When the code was first published. Notes for each change that was committed. If someone tries to sue me for copyright or patent violations, all of the proof is there online and documented.
Thus I would say to anyone considering publishing your software under a free licence, do it early and do it often. open source software is, indeed different than proprietary software. It wants and NEEDS to be seen.
@@scottfranco1962 Ok, thanks for the explanation. But can those changes contain code that would effect my privacy in any waa as a user? Also, what about DRM? Does the BSD license allow it, or even talk about it? (Honestly I just want to be informed on the matter.)
@Fashinqu A. I assume the program was functional before it fell out of maintenance. I further assume that "it cannot work" means that it cannot work with new versions of the OS? Other packages? Not sure why the situation is any different with the GPL or similar. You can't force people to work on your project, especially if you won't. If the software is/was popular, people will step up and fix it. If not, then the software is dead.
For the React, it contains the patent trap underneath the open source surface. If the company uses the React, it means this company is willing to share the usage of all the patents to the Facebook(Meta).
Software patents are not a thing in a lot of places so I wonder how relevant that is
@@fgsaramago Arguably the US market is pretty significant.
Weeeell, probably not. While I am not a lawyer, i found an article a little while back while researching a licence drama within our open source community, which stated that licences are not contracts, they are not two-way binding agreements, a quid-pro-quo. You can set terms within a licence, of course, but those terms merely set out how people can use, modify, [re]distribute your work without committing copyright infringement... and that's it. If you are right about those patent terms within React's licence then theoretically Facebook could take a company to court for copyright infringement if they refuse to share their patents, but it would be up to the judge to decide, and more than likely Facebook would just get a damages payout instead of getting ownership or even access to those patents.
There's one important detail missing about the LGPL: you can use an LGPL licensed project to create your own closed source (or proprietary) software. That is the case with Qt, it doesn't really stop you from making proprietary apps with its LGPL modules, and this is true of KDE software too. You just need to obey to the license's restrictions, which includes for instance providing the source code of the LGPL software used by your app (not your app's source code, unless certain conditions apply).
You can even statically compile your proprietary application with LGPL libraries, counter to what may be seen in forums sometimes, as long as you provide the object files needed to relink with the user's version of that LGPL library. See: the GPL FAQ, section "LGPLStaticVsDynamic", and Qt's "Obligations of the GPL and LGPL". (TH-cam doesn't seem to like links, so this comment got removed yesterday and I had to repost).
In this respect I'd say it's waaaaay more permissive than GPL.
Yeah, I'm more confused now 😂
I like the Babywogue bit, BTW.
Ive been just scrolling through their page not a single thumbnail with "linux experiment" screenshot
I think it would have been interesting to talk about the Linux kernel GPL license, the binary modules, Linus' stance on them, etc.
I think that'd be a video on it's own.
You should have talked about multi license projects too. Because you can license the project under multiple licenses, where the user can choose one. This is often done with Open Source license and a Proprietary version.
Last but not least, everyone can just write their own license instead using a preexisting one.
Yes, but it makes no sense at all. A lot of drivers are dual GPL/BSD. What does that mean? The BSD restrictions are much lower than GPL. It basically negates the GPL.
@@scottfranco1962 You just choose one license. If the GPL in example is not possible, then you can use the other licensed publication. That is in example how some Steam games or applications can be released. They are normally licensed as GPL and that is not compatible with the Steamworks proprietary blob, if they want make use of it. That's just one example when dual licensing can be useful.
I think this dual licensing is usually achieved by releasing the code two times with the different licenses. I never dive in into this materia too much, but that is basically how it works.
@@thingsiplay This can be difficult because you also have to handle who owns the copyright of the code. By default in all of these licenses, the author of that line of code owns the copyright for that code and can refuse to allow it be distributed under the proprietary license. This is a reason Contributor License Agreements have come along which assign the copyright to the maintainer of the repository instead.
@@flagrama That is true and often a problem if this was not handled from the beginning. In example RetroArch has to handle each of its cores (plugins to use the emulators) individually, because every single of them have its own licenses. They needed to contact everyone before they could add it to Steam, with the proprietary Steamworks blob integrated.
Contributor License Agreements is a different story. They take the code and can do whatever they want. The contributor has no rights and basically gives the code to them. It has its own problems, but can solve some issues.
GPL-v3 is the best, no joke, also Open-Source is great!
GPL v2 is far better
The term "Open Source" was coined in 1998 to bury the ethical aspects of Free Software and only present practical values.
The term "Open Source" was coined in 1998 to bury the ethical aspects of Free Software and only present practical values.
I don't have a problem with copyleft in general, but GPL's requirement to distribute dependency source code can get messy with package managers (as in npm, pip, etc.). I guess rust handles this best because it compiles packages from source anyways so vendoring source code is a thing.
Exactly!
“Don’t HESITATE to like, subscribe, turn on notifications…” 😃 This is the first time I understood what you’ve been saying all this time. Great job articulating a fairly complex topic in a digestible manner! 👍🏻
Apache is much closer to MIT that the gpl imo.
MPL would be like a 1/4 notch from the gpl but 3/4 from MIT
I did not expect baby WOGUE to get a shoutout.
In addition to different types, there are also multiple versions of CC license (higher version number = more restrictive), so there’s even more fragmentation than was mentioned in this video
That's very informative. I've been recently wondering from where and where not to copy codes for my projects, and you hit me at the right time. Although I still am not confident this at least provides me a direction in which to look for.
Did you forget about AGPL?
Even if your videos are CC-NC-SA, if I were to use about 5 seconds or less of your "is GNOME user friendly" video to make a video about which DE is the best for beginners and I use that short clip as a testimony that GNOME may not be the best DE for Windows users switching to Linux, would that be considered fair use and thus not covered under copyright/copyleft?
I'd say so!
The easy difference between GPL and MIT.
1) GNU protect the users so they always can get the source and change the software.
2) BSD/MIT protect the programmer from being sued. Anyone can do anything, as long they have MIT license.
That is why MS had BSD license in their product for a long time. Because they used BSD network code.
The last you said is important. OSS and Free software doesn't make it banned to earn money on selling the software, but the "proper" way of earn money is by selling support (like installing or develop features).
i think the GPL is best for protection,though im mixed on creative commons licenses that don't permit distributing modifications,that seems very restrictive to me for a license that's being put next to true free software licenses.
Creative Commons was NOT made for software, and software licenses were NOT made for content.
@@JoaoPedro-ki7ct same idea,pretty restrictive for an open licence.
GPL is great for standalone applications imo, but absolutely catastrophic as a library licence... and people will just ignore it... look at Bukkit for example. Bukkit is GPLv3 but you wouldn't know it given how seemingly most Bukkit plugins out there are closed source or permissively open sourced, which then creates its own linking problems, because who's going to check the licences of the dependences of their dependencies? GPL libraries are a copyright explosion waiting to happen, indeed Bukkit has already had a massive copyright drama _thanks to GPLv3._ As Felix Reda said in their "Julia Reda: Correcting copywrongs" talk in 2014: _"The only reason the [copyright] system hasn't collapsed is that the vast majority creators actually don't enforce their rights."_
@John Smith The problem with 'no derivatives' is that translations are considered derivatives meaning that no one is allowed to translate your work to other languages.
I used to license my code under a triple license, GPL, LGPL, MPL. That seemed like a good idea, until I worked for Google and wanted to use my own project in my work, and the triple license made it a legal nightmare. Google recommended the Apache license, as it basically did what the triple license model was trying to do. Relicensing a project with a bunch of contributors is a giant pain in the ass, because you have to get permission from every contributor to relicense their contributions.
That makes no sense. If it is licensed under the GPL, you can use it on your work no problem. The same for the LGPL and the MIT.
@@softwarelivre2389 The whoooole point of GPL is to coerce any and all projects it touches into also being GPL. Google _could've_ used his projects just fine, the problem is that they didn't want their projects to also become GPL.
@@lodgin that point applies is when you have derived work, but if you're just using the tool, the GPL is the license that better protects the end user's rights.
@@softwarelivre2389 Not true, read the bottom of the GPLv3 licence text.
You can add the 'Common clause' to MIT, X11, BSD or Apache. That is basically a non-comercial clause
Common Clause only apply to the software itself not the derivatives. You can use a common clause software in a proprietary software or build on top of it and still allowed to sell it. What you can't do is to just take the common clause software and sell it as-is. You need to make a value out of it to be able sell it.
Great Video, So far I only used the MIT License because it was the easist to understand.
Well done, its also the only one that isn't selfish!
@@epsi well depends on which version, I think the 4th clause version of BSD is no good at all. However, the others? I agree, they're great👍
MIT is basically as effective as public domain
You forgot MPL 2.0 (used by Firefox), that is one of the best licenses.
Non-viral copyleft license that can replace Apache 2.0 in almost everything without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I like LGPL or MIT for developing tools and GPLv3 for everything else.
Qt and KDE
Why?
Believe or not, today when I traveling to home from the work, I thought "hmm.. I need to watch a video about software licensing", and boom I have a software license explaining video on my TH-cam recommendation now.
As someone who reads all big tech Eula's. Open source license is so refreshing, liberating, brings back faith in humanity.
thank you!
i was trying to understand licenses, but i couldn't. this video helped me a lot!
I remember, when I was looking the differences between licenses, I saw referring to GPL as copyleft and BSD as copyfree, I liked that word game.
0 Views 0 Comments 0 likes
I AM THE CHOSEN ONE!!
You were 4 seconds too late to be the first!
lets all agree, WTFPL is the best license out there.
trying to follow the GPL or apache or BSD and such licenses is headache, like come on, WTFPL is the most freedom based.
WTFPL does not include warranty protections. Therefore people can sue you if they mess things up while using your software.
@@Cuperino
well, you could simply add the no warranty as the WTFPL website says, and that will make it safe :P
no need to copy the license into each source file, like imagine how much KBs you save if you have a large software. xD
@@Cuperino it says "do what you want".. you did want to mess things up, and you were permitted. Nobody said "does what you want"...
As much of a good intention the author of WTFPL had, it's not a real license.
Everyone always forgets about CC0 :(
Wow imagine. I am looking for good and understandable sources on FOSS licenses and here is your video
Nice!
french{digeste} -> english{digestible} (both adj used for food and concepts) | english{a digest (ie a summary)} -> french{résumé}, eg: fr{Ce livre propose un résumé de tout ce que l'on sait sur le sujet.}->en{This book provides a digest of everything that is known on the subject.} (english pronunciation {DIE-jest})
(... although now I think about it, the *real* bon mot in this context would be the *non*-false-friend en{comprehensible}
Newly polished Nick... Nice Tshirt -- Nick for upcoming days . Nice Work Nick and Awesome content Every day!.
Thank you for the video. It’s very informative yet straightforward for someone who just started learning about the licenses.
Always been a fan of the MIT license.
I was looking at licenses a few months ago. I was looking for a license to put the code in the equivalent to public domain.
I looked at Creative Commons - CC0, Apache v.2 and Zero-Clause BSD.
Could you do a video on that kind of license specifically?
Baby wogue is such a weird channel that I love but can't really understand why . LOL
Thanks, very clear! I just needed to learn more about licensing for some projects I want to work on.
I disagree with your assertion that CC is “fragmented”. I would argue it is much less fragmented than open source licenses, since they all exist under one organization. And the licenses are all just modifications of each other, not completely different. I think giving all that choice in this context is a very good thing. And CC has “license choosers” on their website to make decoding all the legal jargon that differs the licenses very easy.
Nick, if you're using cc-by-nc you can not "commercialize" them as well. Cc-by-sa should be the correct for you.
This is a great topic 👍 I will send this to many who would benefit from watching it 😁
the best license is the do what the fuck you like license just because of the name
This is the best no boilerplate video of this topic thank you so much
bro, I literally searched for explanation of all types of open-source licenses this week
literally was just researching this, awesome timing! thanks!
Also there is the unlicense which basically lets you do literally anything.
As a normal person, how can I use this licenses? When I personalized others source code, should I go to a place or a lawyer and let them do the licensing and stuff?
11:30
I think baby WOGUE falls under fair-use because they do it for parody or critic purposes.
You should know that other youtubers do have the right to use short clips of your videos if their work is transformative under the fair use act, i.e. they produce something that is not derivative but critiques your video for example.
Thanks for the succinct explanation and description of the license types.
I was looking for a video for explaining the different licenses so i could use them in my projects and i got this notification. I was like: Ok Mind Reader.
Great Video man. Fedoras Off
So weird to see you without the legendary shirt ;)
Great content as usual
Open Source is awesome
Great video for all the devs out there, ty
Thanks Nick 😄 I always had Confusion With Licenses
Did I just hear Baby Wouge?
One of the most interesting videos of yours yet. Great work.
Let's add:
Cecill -> French equivalent of GPL
And any open hardware license (Type Cern open hardware License)
What is special about Cecill?
Don't forget the Unlicense.
A license that guarantees, without restraint, software is fully public domain.
Nick got a new shirt! HOORAY!
Best video on explaining about open source software license. ❤️
thank you so much. i really needed to understand this
Can you make video on explaining Proprietary Licenses .
MIT is hands down the best one, I always share my code under this license.
I also prefer the MIT license. Didn't like how restrictive the GPL was, so I too use the MIT license for all my projects.
How does fair use play into CC-BY-NC-SA on TH-cam?
Really interesting and helpful video, thanks Nick!
A question about the Apache 2.0 software license:
If I used a software with that license and generated, say, a figure with that software. Is the generated figure also free to be sold by me in my products?
So why is the linux kernel GPL-v2 and not GPL-v3?
Because it is imposible to get the agreement of all the contributor (past and present) of the Linux Kernel
th-cam.com/video/PaKIZ7gJlRU/w-d-xo.html
Because GPLv3 causes some issues with embedded devices, etc. and the founder of Linux doesn't like that.
@@pierreem0 Didn't Linus explicitly say no?
Linux wouldn't be usable in appliances with signed images as GPLv3 requires the end user be able to install their own modifications to the appliance.
We all know that the best FOSS license is the WTFPL or the "Do What The Fuck You Want To" license just for the name alone
Great video as always, thanks Nick!
Did you... already watch it?
@@AR15ORIGINAL Yes, markers make it easier and faster to watch.
I’m surprised apache is more popular than MIT. Maybe it’s a lot of older project that used Apache because MIT license really gotten popular during last decade
Oh boi. Heavy info but needed.
Hi thank you for the explanations, Quick question about software licenced under AGPL-3.0 license. My question is, can I use images generated by this software for stuff like publishing books, POD, and other commercial things?
The license stuff says I can share and modify the software, but what about the images it spits out? Do they need the same AGPL-3.0 treatment even if I'm trying to make some money off them?
Any info you can share would be awesome. Maybe point me to some docs or stuff about using AGPL-3.0 stuff commercially?
Thanks a bunch!
Oi Nic ! What's with the pullover. It's 35 degrees this week in France !
11:19 ok, and how about embedding of yt videos, like yours. If the author allows to do embedding of the yt video, can I use it on commercial website, where I would use this video as a base to ask questions and give answers? Or this case would require the author to give permission? What if the user would use this embedding video link and make a use of it on my commercial questions-answers website without my knowledge? (the website will allow to embed any video link)
Thanks for another great video man. Your channel is one of the better ones for info about FOSS. There are other good ones too, but there are some stinkers out there who just like to spread anger and disinfo somewhat. Not here though, just really good news and info. Keep up the good work!
There's also the OFL(Open Font License).
Thank you this is a good summary!
There's also CC-0 which is the Public Domain license, I don't fully understand it.
Regarding CC licenses, ShareAlike and NoDerivs are mutually exclusive. If you use the NoDerivs element, then others cannot share modifications they've made to your work, making ShareAlike redundant. So there's no such thing as a CC BY-NC-SA-ND license, as you suggest at 11:09.
Also I have no idea who Baby Wogue is or how they're using your likeness in their videos, but that can't necessarily be prohibited by CC BY-NC, especially if your videos haven't been clearly marked as such. Using someone's image or likeness, or even a snippet of a CC BY-NC video could be a fair use, depending on how they used it. If they're using your image to impersonate you or slander you, then it's not a copyright issue but a violation of your publicity rights (and TH-cam's terms).
Good insights. Thank you. On point.
licences are so messy, many android vendors have been ignoring linux's GPL for so darn long :x
Thank you for explaining all of this in such great detail.
He aint gonna smash you bro
@@robertkiestov3734 but he didnt send 20 bucks 😏
I guess all licenses have their place. I´m rather biased on BSD´s. And one nice example of what the BSD-license made possible is that a lot of closed source cra..*eehm* "stuff" is better because of the BSD license. Michael W Lucas once said (something like): "Imagine the scale of human suffering if Microsoft instead decided to make their own ip stack". (They took it from one of the BSD´s and closed sourced it of course). And to be fair, I guess the ip stack is one of few things that doesn´t break a lot in Windows. And then we have MacOS with a lot of BSD stuff. Apples Airport things that runs NeBSD, Playstation (FreeBSD) and I think a lot of other network equipment that runs *BSD OS:es.
I think of it like that BSD is the only truly free and open license. Yes it permits companies to do bad stuff. But "free" and "open" is all about permission. Yes GPL is better for keeping open stuff open. But where we still don´t see the year of the Linux desktop, the "year of the UNIX desktop" has been around with MacOS since 2000. So you gotta ask yourself. Which is best? That Windows remain the same OS/2 clone crap forever or they change to a Linux base? Well they can´t if they like to stay closed. But they CAN if they base a new Windows on FreeBSD. And that´s what I´m on about. It´s better for everyone if bad people like MS can do better stuff and still being bad, than if they have to be bad people using bad stuff.
I´m not against GPL & co at all. I just think of it as "if you can´t beat them, join them". And if sharing is caring, you shouldn´t exclude the mean kids.
What about the ISC license, which is the default when you enter npm init ?
From what I understood, it's basically MIT, but I'm not sure?
Now this makes me wonder. Where do devs of proprietary programs store their code?
Linux is GPLv2. You MUST send your modifications back to the maintainer under GPLv2, I believe.
Linus Torvalds has gone on record stating that GPLv3 is something he does not like.
Does using a library with its license is equal to making changes to it? If you are using a lot of packages in our project (dotnet and npm) but only consume those. Is it required to mention something then? Especially in the MIT and Apache 2.0, that I expected to be just fine as a consumer only.
You should probably water mark your video in a corner with the license icons and have it in the description!
Can you make a video on how to apply these licenses to our projects?
AFAIK BSD is Berkeley Software Distribution, not Source. Very useful video. More educational content!
I have a question which may seem very fundamental but I really do not know:
Does the license give contributors/users right from the original author, or restrict it?
In other words: when you dont include a license as an author, do users have all rights because there are no "rules", or do they have no rights because there is no explicitly specified permission?
What abput the MPL license?