

Ask HN: How to license software... - StanDarsh

Our product is coming into the Beta/Release phase, and I'm curious as to what other developers/companies use to license their software applications.
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adambyrtek
GPL or BSD license :)

But seriously, if you don't want to make it open source you should at least
mention what kind of application it is, what amount of protection do you seek,
is it paid or freely available etc. Give use a bit more background.

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StanDarsh
Hey, thanks for the reply.... Background: I am a co-founder of Tenacious C
(www.tenaciousc.com), and we are developing a tool that presents the internals
of C programming for educational and industry purpose....moving to C++ soon.
Anyway, we do want to make it a paid app; therefore, we do want to protect it.
To what extent? That's what we are contemplating. I was hoping to get some
good/generous feedback on this site because I trust this site and the people
on it.

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hasenj
Most people don't read licenses.

I really don't think you need a huge legal document, just a short paragraph or
a few bullet points to assert your IP and prevent "unauthorized" copies.

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adambyrtek
You forgot to start your comment with the obligatory IANAL. I'm not a lawyer
as well, but it's easy to imagine a situation in which the contents of the
license really matters. Not because anybody would read that, but because this
is something that is legally binding. Hopefully it won't be necessary to
enforce the license, but "prepare for the worst, expect the best".

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brianwillis
I'm fond of the Apache License for open source stuff because it grants users
the four freedoms without the viral nature of the GPL.

For proprietary work, my employer has always outsourced writing the license
agreement to our legal team. Looks like you might have to spend some money.

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StanDarsh
"Looks like you might have to spend some money." lol....yeahhhhh, on that
note, what's the best software to use?

