Less clear cut situations, perhaps a FAQ

[mlinksva]

Feedback received: choosealicense.com is fine for clear-cut situations, but hard to understand implications if chooser wants to do something else later. Examples given:

• make a proprietary version
• offer support

First maybe could be addressed by noting explicitly which licenses allow proprietary derivatives, though that's a mouthful. Second there are no direct implications, but existence of question perhaps hints it would be useful to explain what a license covers and does not.

One approach would be a FAQ, but not sure such would be maintainable or in scope for site.

[ShaneCurcuru]

These are both important questions, and there are probably a half-dozen other similar issues we could all come up with to help people choose.

Rather than creating all the content here, perhaps a better solution is to provide the rough framework of questions to ask - like the existing bullet lists - and then provide pointers to existing organizations that work to provide that kind of education alread. While there are different descriptions of "Can I charge people for software under X", I'm sure one from OSI or FSF as a link would be a sufficient resource.

[surfmuggle]

I was wondering if there is such a thing like a "trivial code". For example i am grateful to have found performance.js but it has only 78 sloc to get information from an api. Although the readme contains this line

Feel free to use, modify, or share any of these snippets.

I am still uncertain if this is enough; according to my understanding of no-license copy pasting the code and using it would be a violation as long as no license is provided.

So i would suggest to add a question to the FAQ if there is such a think as trivial (amount of) code. or if a line mentioned in the readme is enough.

[mlinksva]

@surfmuggle might be worth including in eventual FAQ, but the answer wouldn't be definitive. You might be curious about free software lore such as https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legally-Significant.html#Legally-Significant and concepts like https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#too_small_for_fair_use_the_de_minimis_defense but beyond curiosity, talk to your own lawyer. Asking for a open source license as you did obtains a lot more clarity, which is why that's what the no-license copy suggests. :smile: