Some guidelines for choosing a free/open source licence

Let me attempt to give a few guidelines for choosing the right software licence for your project. The first suggestion is that if your software is worth even a dime, please consult a decent lawyer. Software licensing is a slippery slope; one wrong move and you are in deep trouble. So if you have the slightest of doubts while choosing a software licence, take the decision only after consulting an expert. But if you are developing software with no monetary benefits in mind, then you can adopt one of the free/open source licences, after some deliberation. If you want your work and all the subsequent derivative works to be placed in the free software domain, it is better to choose a copyleft licence like the GNU General Public License. One problem with this choice is that your software or library might be overlooked by some of the companies in the free/open source sector that are developing commercial software. Even though it is a free software licence, the GPL is a very strict one -- adopting it guarantees the freedom of your software forever but might make it less popular in the long run. On the other hand, if you are more interested in your work proliferating, rather than being in strict allegiance with the free software philosophy, then you can select one of the permissive licences like the MIT License. This, essentially, guarantees almost every freedom including the freedom for proprietary software to link your libraries. This may not be preferable for many developers.

Another situation in which you need to opt for a licence is when you are producing a manual or document for uploading onto the Web. Then it is a very good idea to license the work with the Creative Commons (CC) License. This can be used to make sure that your work is attributed to you, shared alike, is used for non-commercial purposes and anyone trying to create work that is derivative of yours can be stopped.