More permissive license

[jasny]

The current AGPL license is really restrictive. Projects that could benefit from this library might not be able to use it because of legal reasons.

I understand you might want to reserve some right, making a license like BSD or MIT to permissive. Please consider using something like CC BY-SA 3.0 or LGPL.

Thanks for making the world a better place!

[oscarotero]

Hi! I'm not a license expert, so I'd like to know what is that makes AGPL so restrictive. Far as I know, AGPL allows use, copy and modify the code. You can use it in commercial projects and the only difference between AGPL and BSD or MIT is that if you create a modified copy of the code, AGPL doesn't allow distribute it as a propietary code.

[jasny]

GPL licenses are hard to understand. But let me try to give a summery plus implications. All the GPL licenses say that the anyone that receives the software is allowed to copy, modify and redistribute the software freely. The license does have a number of restrictions, but mainly towards the distributor and the recipient. So the recip

One of the main restrictions is that you can't relicense the software. So if I deliver you an application licensed with GPL, you are allowed to sell the application to others (for any amount) under the GPL license. People who bought the software from you may also redistribute the software, etc, etc.

The difference between GPL, AGPL and LGPL is the scope of the software:

• GPL says the software should be seen as the full package that is distributed. So I can only distribute a packages that includes the Embed library under the GPL license. With composer you could argue that the library isn't distributed with the rest of the software, but this isn't a discussion I want to get into.
• AGPL also says that anyone who receives only part of the software (in a client/server model) has the right to use, copy, modify and redistribute the full software. For a website it means that any visitor of the site has the right to receive, copy, modify and distribute the full source code of the website. Which is fine for a project like wikipedia, but in most cases this isn't acceptable.
• LGPL is less restrictive. It says that if the software is a library, the application using the library should not be considered part of the software

GPL are difficult licenses. In general I choose to stay away from them. Creative common Attribution-ShareAlike basically does the same as LGPL, but is much simpler to understand.

If I ware you I'd pick with MIT. Yes in theory I could distribute your library as proprietary code. However I always need to include the copyright notice with your name, e-mail address and website in it. Anyone buying the code can simply see that they've purchased code that has not been developed by the company they bought is from and is also available for free.

[oscarotero]

Thank you, @jasny. It's very interesting. I always thought that creative common licences were more for content than for code. I guess LGPL is a good option but I'm going to investigate also MIT.

[jasny]

Great, that you're investigating this and are considering an alternative. I'm no a little because I had to do the research for my own open source libs, but I'm neither a lawyer or expert. You could ask a question on Programmers stack exchange to find out the consequences of the different licenses.

I looked into it and you're right CC is for content not for code, so it isn't a good fit for a software library.

[damienalexandre]

+1 over MIT if you want my opinion :-)

Github made this great website Demystifying the most common licenses: http://choosealicense.com/

[oscarotero]

Ok, after some researching, I start this new year with a new MIT license :)

[damienalexandre]

Awesome \o/

Can you also tag a new release?
Thx a lot for this library, very usefull!

[oscarotero]

Done: https://github.com/oscarotero/Embed/releases/tag/v1.3.0