Open Source Licensing

The cluster discusses corporate policies on open source licenses, including compliance risks, approved license lists, and how non-standard or restrictive licenses deter adoption by large companies.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Open Source
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#9022
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Keywords

IT US SPDX FOSS OSS MIT FAQ OSI LicenseSpring.com batchkeys.com license licenses licensing software gpl code lawyers companies legal corporations

Sample Comments

klabb3 Apr 21, 2025 View on HN

These days there is almost nothing good with permissive if your project gets used by mega corps specifically. They don’t want your opinions, your expertise, they don’t want to share anything back, they won’t pay you, and they will even avoid giving credit – the lowest of the low. And somehow we’re still worrying about inconveniencing megacorps as if that mattered, at all!I would love a license that says if your company has a physical presence in 10+ countries, one of its executive owns a yach

sodality2 May 7, 2022 View on HN

No large company would begin using unlicensed code like that, they have many rules in place to avoid license violations. Which means anyone at the company evaluating it would see the license scheme. Most would probably switch to a different library in order to avoid the hassle of requesting budget to pay for it.

gat1 Apr 3, 2023 View on HN

Also implying software companies do respect open source licenses

mrbungie May 26, 2024 View on HN

If it worries you, maybe open an issue? No sane man would allow a weird license that's an API call away from screwing up your own products.

CiPHPerCoder Jan 30, 2017 View on HN

Which copyleft licenses would these corporations be okay with?

pc86 Dec 12, 2021 View on HN

Why do lawyers have a hard time with OSS licenses?

EamonnMR Oct 16, 2020 View on HN

I'm not sure most companies would touch software with a nonstandard license like that though.

fsflover Oct 16, 2024 View on HN

No, it's a win for users that large corporations avoid this license.

xdennis Apr 3, 2023 View on HN

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. Many companies ignore open source licenses because and it's difficult to prove they aren't following them.

verdverm Feb 23, 2020 View on HN

It means companies will not let their employees use software licensed with restrictive or uncommon licenses, even if free, they are automatically red flagged. So you immediately eliminate a large and profitable segment users.