On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 7:29 PM, David Herron <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm curious about the preferred license for modules that are distributed > through the npmjs.org repository > > In particular is there any legal barrier to using GPL in such modules? > > As far as I understand it, the legal barrier would be whether a module > which uses a GPL'd module is derivative of that module. I don't think that > it would be, but then the LGPL license does exist for a reason. > The question of GPL / LGPL / AGPL licensing for JavaScript is a complicated one. So complicated, in fact, that many companies simply prohibit the use of ?GPL licensed JavaScript code (and other code), in order to avoid the legal risks. In terms of "legal barriers", you can certainly specify the license on a package; but many people who do that, don't actually understand what it means when they do it. Take the regular GPL, for example. What does it mean to "link" in JavaScript? A legal definition of that would be at the heart of any question of violating the license, because linking is at the heart of the GPL. To a large extent, the choice of license comes down to the goals in providing an open source package. If the goal is widespread adoption, ease of adoption, ease of contribution, or the like, the permissive licenses like MIT or BSD are a great fit. Those are the prevalent licenses in the Node.js community, and I firmly believe that has been a significant factor in the broad adoption of Node.js and of the many available packages made available for it under the same licenses. On the other hand, if "freedom" in the sense of the GPL is more important to the author than how much adoption they get, they might choose to use one of the ?GPL licenses. One final point I'll add is that many people who choose a ?GPL license do so under the mistaken belief that it will lead to more contributions back and more "control" over the code they open source. They think that using a permissive license will cause everyone to go off and maintain their own fork instead of contributing back to the project. But in actual fact, it's much more common that people want to contribute back, and _don't_ want to have to keep maintaining their own version. And with a permissive license, they have more freedom to modify the code and provide back their changes to the original author, rather than get tangled up in complex license terms. Hope that helps. -- Martin Cooper + David Herron - nodejs.davidherron.com > > -- > Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ > Posting guidelines: > https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "nodejs" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en > -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
