Which License is best for the open source project? MIT? / The Unlicense?

[Arvindjitta]

When i was trying to make new open source repository.....I've got stuck at selecting appropriate license.... Which License is best for the open source project? MIT? / The Unlicense?

[eddiejaoude]

This is a great question 👍 , not sure I know the "right" answer though 🤓

A good place to look is http://choosealicense.com by GitHub

Both the MiT and The Unlicesnse seem very similar apart from the condition of license and copyright notice

Feature	MIT	The Unlicense	Details
Commercial use	✅	✅	The licensed material and derivatives may be used for commercial purposes
Distribution	✅	✅	The licensed material may be distributed
Modification	✅	✅	The licensed material may be modified
Private use	✅	✅	The licensed material may be used and modified in private
License and copyright notice	✅	-	A copy of the license and copyright notice must be included with the licensed material
Liability	✅	✅	This license includes a limitation of liability
Warranty	✅	✅	This license explicitly states that it does NOT provide any warranty

[MikeRogers0]

I normally use MIT for stuff which is 100% open source, it kind of feels like the standard choice right now.

I have been using The Prosperity Public License 3.0.0 in a few of my projects. It lets you be open source, while still requesting users pay you some money.

[eddiejaoude]

Thanks @MikeRogers0 , that is an interesting one, I didnt know about it, I will take a look 👍

[HarshKapadia2]

Almost all of my projects are under the MIT license, but my git_basics repo is under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license as it is a documentation project.

[eddiejaoude]

Why did you use a different license for your documentation project?

[HarshKapadia2]

I was exploring licenses and I found CC-BY-SA-4.0, a license which had some more conditions than the MIT license.

I have compiled the documentation from various sources (that I have linked all over the document at the appropriate places) and I wanted any further modifications to be open sourced with appropriate credits provided to the people whom the content originally belonged to and to be released under the same license, which forces any further modifications also to have all the credits and that's a chain that I wanted to have.

I don't think the MIT license forces you to do that.

Do my points make sense? Do correct me if I am wrong. 👍

[eddiejaoude]

Ah oh, makes sense, thank you 👍

[stemount]

So this doesn't remain "unanswered" forever (as it is an open ended question @Arvindjitta - please raise another issue or add to this discussion if you have a project in mind), I have marked @eddiejaoude post as the answer with the link to https://choosealicense.com (hopefully being up to date enough).

The Prosperity licenses are interesting though as Open Source Software needs financial backing!

[eddiejaoude]

Thanks @stemount , good idea 👍