Okay, you have worked hard, put in long hours and it is done – the best dApp the planet has ever seen, open source of course.  You have put it up on Github and now you are wondering what would be the best license to use for your open source project dApp (or anything open source). 

Well, we ran across this useful site full of information about the entire spectrum of open source licensing alternatives, thanks to Github.   The site is called – Choose A License.

Welcome to the Developer’s corner (not only for developers though)… Open Source License overview.  In this post, we hope to give you a brief overview about the myriad of licenses available to developers once they have finished an application build and want to choose an appropriate open source license.

MIT license – A short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.

MIT license – green circle (the green circle definition is applicable to all licenses found on this site): e.g. commercial – The software and derivatives may be used for commercial purposes

MIT license – blue circle (the blue circle definition is applicable to all licenses found on this site): e.g. conditions – A copy of the license and copyright notice must be included with the software.

MIT license – red circle (the red circle definition is applicable to all licenses found on this site): e.g. limitations – The license includes a limitation of liability.

Apache License 2.0 – A permissive license whose main conditions require preservation of copyright and license notices. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.

GNU General Public License v3.0 – Permissions of this strong copyleft license are conditioned on making available complete source code of licensed works and modifications, which include larger works using a licensed work, under the same license. Copyright and license notices must be preserved. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights.

Other Licenses

GNU AGPLv3

GNU GPLv3

GNU LGPLv3

Mozilla Public License 2.0

The Unlicense

The Choose A License site further explains that the licenses (on the Choose A License site) represent the entire spectrum of open source licenses, from highly protective to unconditional. One of these should work for most new open source projects. Many other open source licenses exist, including older versions of and close substitutes for some of the above. See the resources listed on Choose A License about page if you’d like to read more.

So, if you have built an application that is open source and you need a license to go along with it, try the Choose A License website – found here.  We hope this post has been helpful.

Note: If you do not have the Blockstack browser, please see this link (note – to enable the full functionality of any dApp built for the Blockstack ecosystem (e.g., building a new internet, a decentralized internet, re-decentralizing the internet) you need to use the Blockstack browser).

For more on All things Developer^TM, see this link here. For more on the engineering meeting at Blockstack, please visit the forum.

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