Folks whose website code is out in the open, visible on sites like GitHub or GitLab:

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

Folks whose personal website code is out in the open, visible on sites like GitHub or GitLab:

Which license did you use for your codebase?

#OSS

[mijndert@fosstodon.org]

@mahryekuh none, is that bad?

[tamsynulthara@mastodon.social]

@mahryekuh I've historically used the MIT license if permitted by my dependencies, and the dependency license otherwise (typically GPL).

I'm considering moving to the GPL as my default.

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@TamsynUlthara Thank you, I hadn't even considered the dependency licenses.

Is there anything in particular that makes you consider GPL?

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@mijndert I have no idea.

[tamsynulthara@mastodon.social]

@mahryekuh I think the situation with large corporations taking from the open-source community and giving nothing back has become very plain to see. Yes, I'd probably be hurting adoption of my projects to some degree (particularly by businesses), but I'm usually writing that code for myself, first and foremost.

[jorijn@jorijn.dev]

@mijndert @mahryekuh

brb buying mindertstuij.nl to sell crypto trading courses

[matthiask@hachyderm.io]

@mahryekuh MIT or BSD for basically everything for years now.

When I started working in public I used the GPL but I have switched to MIT/BSD when moving to Python and Django because it better aligned with the ecosystem.

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@TamsynUlthara Yeah, I am OK with devs taking inspiration from my code or reverse-engineering pieces, but not with AI tools doing so.

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@jorijn @mijndert This is payback for Mijndert's "shots fired" post from the other day, hmm?

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@matthiask Would you pick different licenses for libraries versus a personal website?

[jscholes@dragonscave.space]

@mahryekuh @mijndert I would probably also choose none—few topics have more power to make my eyes roll back in boredom than software licensing—or a "do whatever the fuck you want with this just please don't talk to me about it" license otherwise. Either way I'll most likely be doing wrong by some dependency owner because I'm not a lawyer.

[rallias@hax.social]

@mahryekuh So, it's not out in public yet, but my plan is to use WTFPL.

I tend to understand the justification behind using GPL as an attempt to prevent freeloaders, but on the flip side, freeloaders gonna freeload anyway, nothing I can do to prevent that. I don't have some magical slush fund to pursue copyright violations, and absent that, license means jack shit.

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@jscholes @mijndert I like your attitude, James!

Every once in a while I revisit some licensing topic, but it's a tricky subject and I cannot grasp it as much as I'd like to.

And yes, bureaucracy is boring.

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@rallias You make an excellent point about freeloaders and not legally pursuing them!

[jscholes@dragonscave.space]

@mahryekuh @TamsynUlthara I'd quite like my code (and yours) to end up in AI training data as a small effort to improve the accessibility of their output. Each to their own, of course.

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@jscholes @TamsynUlthara I didn't think of it like that… it's like re-educating Copilot.

(I'm still happy you consider my code worthy enough of such a role!)

[trey@indieweb.social]

@mahryekuh None. Unlicensed is default, right?

[mahryekuh@fosstodon.org]

@trey Yes, which applies default copyright laws.

[paulox@fosstodon.org]

@mahryekuh I use CC BY-SA 4.0 for the content of my blog and social accounts ️

If you do not explicitly declare any license for your blog it's implicitly "All right reserved" (or similar depending on your country specific "copyright" law)

Your question triggered me to think about using a specific license for the code in my blog, but maybe I'll choose a different license based on the content (e.g. BSD for Django code, LGPL for psycopg, ...)