<story><title>Zed Shaw: Why I (A/L)GPL</title><url>http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snprbob86</author><text>Every time I think I understand software licenses, I immediately think I don&apos;t. The posts I&apos;ve seen today have only served to confuse me more. Is there a simple, understandable, maybe even FUN, required reading page on this subject? I&apos;m looking for &quot;talk to me like I&apos;m a 3 year old&quot; but also &quot;don&apos;t waste my time&quot;. Suggestions?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jon_dahl</author><text>As a partial answer to your question, I for one thought that Zed&apos;s final point made sense (and made me better understand the GPL):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you can do just about anything with MIT- or BSD-licensed software. But the GPL tries to make everything around it GPL too. If you build software that integrates with a GPL&apos;d library, you have to release your software with a GPL (or similar) license.&lt;p&gt;So Zed&apos;s plan is to offer his software under a GPL license for free (open-source to open-source), and also sell it without the GPL license for pay (corp to corp).&lt;p&gt;Good place to go for GPL info: the GPL FAQ (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Zed Shaw: Why I (A/L)GPL</title><url>http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snprbob86</author><text>Every time I think I understand software licenses, I immediately think I don&apos;t. The posts I&apos;ve seen today have only served to confuse me more. Is there a simple, understandable, maybe even FUN, required reading page on this subject? I&apos;m looking for &quot;talk to me like I&apos;m a 3 year old&quot; but also &quot;don&apos;t waste my time&quot;. Suggestions?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacobian</author><text>The best single work I&apos;ve read on the subject is Van Lindberg&apos;s _Intellectual Property and Open Source_ (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517963/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517963/&lt;/a&gt;). I don&apos;t think it&apos;s quite &quot;talk to me like I&apos;m a 3 year old&quot; territory -- it assumes a basic understanding of code and property -- but I don&apos;t think it&apos;s a waste of time.</text></comment>