How Licenses Are Chosen

I have been involved with the open source community long enough to recognize that decisions in projects about licensing strategy are almost always thoughtfully and carefully considered . Indeed, I learned far more about open source licensing from listening to those online licensing discussions than I ever learned about this topic in law school. The leaders of open source projects are knowledgeable about the law, committed to the principles of open source, and determined to create a commons of free software available to all. And so they write and choose licenses with intelligence and passion.

For many commercial companies, the discussion of which license to use, at least in the early stages, often centers on one or both of the following issues:

1. How can we make money from distributing this software under an open source license? In essence, can our license help us sell free software?

2. How can we prevent others from making money unfairly from our open source software? This is the so-called free- rider issue, where licensees reap all the benefits of others' work with no return obligations.

These questions are addressed in reverse order in the next two sections of this chapter.