License?

[wiseaidev]

Edit: Since this issue got 1 downvote, let me tear down this a lil bit.

TLDR;

Choosing a license for your project is a crucial step in making it accessible and open to the public. Without a license, no one can use your code, and that defeats the purpose of sharing it on platforms like GitHub. It is important to understand that no license means that all rights are reserved, and you cannot modify or redistribute the code without explicit permission from the copyright holder. This not only limits the potential reach of your project but also makes it difficult for others to collaborate and contribute to it.

Introduction

When it comes to sharing your GitHub project with others, choosing the right license is crucial. It's a decision that can greatly impact how people use and share your code without any legal complications or copyright violations. A well-crafted license provides clear guidelines on modifications, distribution, and usage of your work while protecting you from potential infringement issues. Therefore, selecting a suitable license for your project should be given utmost importance as it reflects both the goals you have set for yourself and the level of control you want over what happens with your creation in future endeavors.

Choosing a Licence

Various licenses exist, ranging from Permissive to Copyleft ones, to proprietary ones. The former type such as MIT and Apache grants users the freedom to utilize, adapt and circulate your code without any limitations. On the other hand, GPL, a Copyleft license mandates that modified versions of original work must also be licensed under identical terms. Moreover, licenses like the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) that are proprietary in nature impose restrictions on the user's rights and necessitate their consent to specific terms and conditions. These types of licenses serve as a safeguard for businesses' intellectual property, like TheStartup™, preventing unauthorized usage, modification, or distribution of software by others without prior permission.

It's crucial to take into account how compatible your chosen license is with others that are integrated or relied upon by your codebase. Incompatibility can lead to legal complications while hindering reusability opportunities for your software solution. Fortunately, in case you are not sure which license should go with your project, there are many websites to help you out, most notably the choosealicense website.

Conclusion

To sum up, selecting the appropriate license for your code is undoubtedly important to ensure its accessibility to everyone. Your code becomes useless without a license and cannot be utilized by anyone. Therefore, it's crucial to conduct thorough research on each available option before finalizing one. With careful consideration comes a great reward, your code will become an invaluable resource for the community!

Resources

docs.github.com

[arpittyagi102]

Hello,
Assign me this Issue, I would love to help

[ishank-s]

GPL 3 please :)

[wiseaidev]

Deez License v3

[EraYaN]

GPL 3 please :)

A more permissive license might be more advantageous since some of the tooling or SDKs might not be GPL compatible. Rather look at Apache-2 or just MIT.

[xslendix]

some of the tooling or SDKs might not be GPL compatible.

Which are? GPLv3 is good for many things, we do not another FreeBSD and Apple incident either.

[EraYaN]

Way to many compilers and languages that might be straight up proprietary or still restricted. That also makes the standard libraries that, meaning it can't really be GPL or another viral license. Jai anyone? But even MSVC is technically a pain, you need to do special linking stuff, anything Delphi is probably also off the table, don't think there is a GPL compatible standard library for that whatever became of Borland probably still own it. Since this is just a little experiment Apache 2 or something like it shouldn't matter all that much.

[xslendix]

Here's an idea: each language implementation can have it's own license. It's up to the maintainer of the language to license it.

[biggusbeetus]

@xslendix Wouldn't this cause a nightmare for third parties trying to use multiple implementations?

[xslendix]

@xslendix Wouldn't this cause a nightmare for third parties trying to use multiple implementations?

nahhhhhhh

[jonasbadstuebner]

I think this fits here best:
@ryanwinchester I am thinking about modifying your Elixir lexer for an interpreter I'm building. Do you mind that?
I am going to give you credit and link this repository, but didn't just want to yoink it. I tried building my own lexer for the project, but your Elixir is just better. And until this repo has a license, my best way to get permission to use code is to ask the guy that wrote it.

[ryanwinchester]

@DrBu7cher go for it