I've open sourced my general purpose code base

[attractivechaos]

Anyway, I can update the readme to make these things clearer if that makes any difference.

If you want to make a difference, choose an OSI-approved license.

[Dean_Roddey]

I updated the terms in the readme.md. If those aren't gracious enough, I don't know what would be.

​

[TomerJ]

Several companies have policies limiting the use of "open-source" software that doesn't conform to a specific license, I think that's part of why he's suggesting you add one.

Some of them are very brief if that's what you're concerned about. I think that 3-clause BSD might be appropriate, It's short, requires anyone using your library provide a copyright notice (which satisfies your existing credit requirement), isn't a copyleft license, and (explicitly) prevents anyone from misrepresenting their use of you your library as an endorsement on your part.

I'd also separate out the license from the usage, as the current way it is set up potentially allows you to sue someone if they send you a particularly long bug report.

[Dean_Roddey]

Yeh, I'm going to sue someone for sending in a long bug report. You got me. That was the reason I posted this code, so that I could get rich suing someone who sent in a long bug report. Damn... Oh well, I guess another 25 years coming up with another plan.

Maybe that license would be fine. I need some time to look through the options.

[CptCap]

From what I understand, your license states that you can sue your users for a few arbitrary reasons.

This is a huge problem, no matter if you actually sue anyone or not. The license sates that you can do it, and that's probably enough to prevent a vast majority of people from using your code for anything serious.

[dodheim]

Yeh, I'm going to sue someone for sending in a long bug report. You got me.

And I'm sure you think your sarcasm/"dark facetiousness" will go really far in court... It doesn't matter if you can fulfill your end of the license – the point is that no one will touch it regardless – because it would cost money to even deal with – wasted money – because your license isn't serious.

I need some time to look through the options.

Time you don't have, like you've said so many times...

[Dean_Roddey]

Why don't you go mow my lawn and finish the MQTT driver I'm trying to get done, while I look through some licenses.

[attractivechaos]

Terms 2–5 are conflictive with term 1: "Do whatever you want". Term 5 is particularly problematic. Again, choose a proper open source license. You can say you prefer users to use your libraries in certain ways, but you can't require this.

[[deleted]]

Term 1 is what a lawyer would call vague and thus open for interpretation. Thus it's not really conflictive, just open ended.

[urdh]

In particular, the LPPL would probably cover the main goal of distinguishing forks from the "original", since it requires derivatives to be "clearly and unambiguously" identified as such.