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Should I choose MIT or BSD 3-Clause for my engine? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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Hello everyone.

I'm developing an open-source visual novel engine. And I'm struggling to choose between the two licenses: MIT and BSD 3-Clause. I wasn't much about licenses until this moment, so I have to ask someone else. Which one should I pick and why, if someone knows?

Thank you in advance.

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[–] 35 points 2 months ago (20 children)

Keep your project healthy and alive by using LGPL or some similar FLOSS license instead of MIT. MIT and other permissive licenses are horrible.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 2 months ago (19 children)

    Horrible? Okay, then. Can you explain why? I mean, I know that Ren'Py is using MIT, and there are no problems with anything as far as I can tell. So, what's wrong with it?

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago (16 children)

    Permissive license is basically for you and contributors to provide free labour and when mature enough, big corp X can just exploit it and use it for their own benefit off your free labour if needed.

    There are actual good and big projects that use permissive licensing that have not been overtaken (postgres for example) but they mostly have very strong, cohesive business and market plan to achieve that, plus the bature of their software.

    If your software is actually complicated and useful, don't let corporations exploit it for nothing.

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  • [–] [S] 12 points 2 months ago (15 children)

    Okay, so it's a threat if I use a permissive license. Thank you very much! I'll think about it.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    The point of different licenses is the thing you ought to be looking at.

    The point of mit is to get the licensed thing used as widely as possible. It breaks down any barriers to use. A good example of something that should be mit licensed is an encryption algorithm. A good example of something that shouldn’t be mit licensed is anything else.

    The point of bsd3-clause is to prevent the licensed likeness from being used to imply the creator shares some view or idea. A good example of something that should be bsd3-clause licensed is the royalty free music on youtube. A good example of something that shouldn’t be bsd3-clause licensed is a creative work the author wants to have their name known for.

    The point of the various gpl licenses is to create a digital commons that all people can access. A good example of something that ought to be gpl licensed is a game engine you want people to be able to freely use and modify but never make secret changes to sell. A good example of something that shouldn’t be gpl is a game engine you want to eventually sell the code of or make secret changes and sell the code of those.

    If my language sounds biased, it is because I have a bias.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    That's a good explanation, thank you for teaching me.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Your openness and willingness to learn here is admirable. People are very opinionated about these things sometimes, and you are listening in a constructive and diplomatic way.

    Kudos to you for being that type of person. 🤝🫶 You were brought up well. 😉

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Np. It’s easy to just choose the license that is easiest or “fire and forget”, but too many programmers don’t consider what kind of freedoms they want their speech to have and that the license is how you define that.

    If you want to know something feel free to ask.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    The point of mit is to get the licensed thing used as widely as possible. It breaks down any barriers to use

    There are no barriers to use, except that you have to share the source code back, and give users the option to modify it. If you use it without modifyiing it, you can just point users to the existing public code.

    The only barrier to use is that Apple disallows (A)GPL related libraries in any of their code, published through their main distribution channels to their platforms (mainly talking about apple app store here).

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-avoid-public-gpl-floggings-on-apples-app-store/

    But this is ultimately on Apple for not giving users the needed amount of control over their devices to comply with the license. This annoyingly common rhetoric that the GPL itself is a "barrier" or "restrictive" is just blaming the wrong party.

    Now, even though I'm more in favor of copyleft, I can understand with the decision to license software or libraries permissively in order to be able to distribute them through the App Store.

    gpl licensed is a game engine you want people to be able to freely use and modify but never make secret changes to sell

    This is tricky because the GPL is fairly aggressive, and may require the entire game to be open sourced if it's distributed as one bundle. LGPL doesn't fight as hard for users freedoms, but also has some similar issues. Most game developers don't want to open source their games, so I think a permissive license is probably the easiest choice for a game engine.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago

    Most game developers don’t want to open source their games, so I think a permissive license is probably the easiest choice for a game engine.

    That's why I was considering a permissive license in the first place, yes.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Or from the other side, GPL would guarantee that you yourself (and your project's contributors) would still have access even if a good fork emerges.

    Things happen over years or decades.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Do you mean that without GPL my access to my own project can vanish?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Your access to a popular and commercial fork might be non-existent. You would maybe not even mind that they're selling your code - possibly just wanting to tune it a bit, since you know how it used to work. But the fork can decide they're proprietary and they won't give you any source code.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    MIT and BSD are the corporate friendly licenses that say you can take my code and use it and even make it proprietary, as well. So long as you provide attribution, do whatever you want.

    If that’s fine by you then choose that license. You can read little summaries here but be advised this page is owned by GitHub and they have an interest in seeing MIT and BSD adoption, so the language they use subtly reflects that IMO https://choosealicense.com/licenses/

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