I'm sure I'm not the only open source developer right now who is (re)considering which licences they use for their projects.

I work on my Psion projects for two reasons.

1. Educating people (including myself) on Psion's platforms (especially SIBO/EPOC16).
2. Encouraging people to use Psion kit today, or even develop new software and hardware.

I guess, in a sense, they're projects aimed at fostering a community, not at big business.

The licences I pick should reflect this.

What do you think?

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@thelastpsion (Out of interest, was there a specific incident that led you to reconsider licensing? Wondering if I missed something)

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@joepie91 It's been a slow build. But since the xz situation, I've seen a lot of people talking about protecting both code and developers from mistreatment, not just from malicious actors but from external (corporate?) demands/greed. My brain linked that to licensing (I can't think of any specific posts).

Coincidentally, I've also been trying to decide which license I should release CTRAN under.

I don't know how much the "right" license will help anyone. But I'd like to investigate it further.

@thelastpsion Ah right, that makes sense - possibly inspired by the xz maintainer getting hounded for updates on the mailing list?

Personally I decided some time ago that I don't think licenses are the right tool for this sort of thing, deciding to use an effectively public domain license so as to minimally interfere with legitimate uses; and instead just making corporations and other demanding folks unwelcome on a social and sometimes technical level.

The premise here being that you don't realistically have any recourse if a corporation decides to ignore your licensing constraints (because lawyers cost money) but something becomes uninteresting to people and especially companies very quickly if they are told that they are unwelcome and all their bug reports are unceremoniously closed.

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