https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/permissive-and-protective-software-licenses/
For this blog entry I’ve decided to dig into the world of software licenses. In class we went over quite a few different licenses like GPL, MIT, and Apache, but just looking through the https://www.tldrlegal.com/browse site, it’s clear we only scratched the surface. That’s not even including the fact that from what I understand anyone can make up their own license with a word doc and lawyer, and the list of different licenses just grows. Yet despite that all licenses have a common goal, which is to explain who can do what with somebodies work and what they can do with it. This is a very important aspect to software development, which I never really considered as something I would have to think too deeply on, mainly because legal matters aren’t really my expertise. Because of that I wanted to find a blog post that could break things down in a way even someone like me could understand.
In my search I found How Do Open Source Licenses Work? Permissive and Protective Software Licenses Explained written by David Clinton. In the post David broke the types of licenses into two categories, permissive and protective.
On the permissive side we have licenses like MIT and Apache. With these types of licenses they basically let people do almost whatever they want. The article puts it pretty clearly: permissive licenses “give you the right to use the software for any purpose – including commercial purposes – and the right to modify the software to suit your needs.” For someone like me who prefers simple, straightforward rules, this one seemed the one I’d be most compatible with.
Then we have protective licenses, which David also referred to as restrictive licenses. These are the copyleft licenses like GPL that we went over in class. Similar to permissive licenses they give the users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, but with the extra conditions that said software must remain free and open source now and forever. Considering this I can understand why David would call these types of licenses restrictive, but at the same time a part of me understands and appreciates someone who would choose this type of license.
After reading this blog post I definitely got a better understanding of the different types of licenses and David did a good job in breaking it down to the essentials. The thing though is that while it answered the question on how licenses work, I am now posed with the question of which type I’d choose. On the one hand I like the flexibility of permissive licenses and the fact that you can either share or sell your work. On the other hand protective licenses seem to prioritize “the little guy” and keeping improvements in the open, which I like, but I also know if I put in the work of making improvements I would like the option to get paid, though I guess that says more about me. So much too think about.
From the blog CS@Worcester – CS Notes Blog by bluu1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.




