Choosing a software license

(With apologies to the memory of Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

How shall I license thee? Let me count the ways

I license thee to be free to distribute and embed

My code can be buggy, when I wrote it late last night

“While” loops have been made without a stated end

I license thee to change and modify

Most urgent need, by emacs and vi

I license thee MIT, as men strive for Right,

I license thee QPL, as they turn from Praise.

I license thee with a Python, put to use

In my old griefs, and with my postdoc’s faith.

I license thee with a license I seemed to lose

With my crashed disk, — I license thee with the BSD

Mozilla, Apache, of all my web-stuff! – and, if Stallman choose,

I shall license thee better with GPLv3.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Fark
  • Digg
  • Technorati
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • FriendFeed
  • PDF
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks

Comments are closed.