

Ask HN: Which is the liberal opensource license with the least legal overhead? - DamonOehlman

Based on my own research I've generally opted for the MIT License, but I'm wondering if others with more experience with the legal side of OpenSource can offer some clarification regarding this MIT vs other licenses.
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tshtf
In terms of word count, I'm sure the MIT License is one of the lowest. But if
you're looking in terms of total legal overheard, you may want to consider
that a more modern license crafted by a legal team could possibly be better
tuned for the laws than a license with a smaller word count. IANAL.

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mariuskempe
The Unlicense - <http://unlicense.org>. Put your software into the public
domain, forget about all legal complexity. And this way people can reuse your
code in the most hassle-free way possible.

Also, keep in mind - no matter which software license you choose, your code
will go into the public domain eventually.

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wmf
Public domain, unlicensing, the wtf license, etc. _create_ legal hassles
instead of avoiding them, because many people have a short list of preapproved
licenses that they understand and these aren't on the list. And companies with
legal departments generally don't want to touch these licenses.

~~~
mariuskempe
I do know where you're coming from, but SQLite, which is in the public domain,
is by far the most deployed SQL implementation, and most of those deployments
are by companies - big companies, even.

Also, by your logic, nobody should ever have used the GPL when it was new-
fangled.

