I read all the licenses, and frankly I am kindda baffled by the many choices available. I know some relax the limitation of the license so that open source stuff can be used in commercial applications.
But other than that, why are there so many licenses out there? Is there any major difference between them. How do I go about choosing the right one for me?
To not make this too general and complicated I'll just throw in some licenses here and you guys can tell me what's the main point of each
Edit: (Pointed out to me, by 3 people, no less) whether or not a license allows a user to use the software in a commercial software is covered in this question. But, as stated, I'm also looking if someone can shed light on the difference other than that. In context of choosing one for my own project rather than in the context of whether or not I can use the software within my own commercial software ( like I believe the other thread is about )
There are licenses accepted by the OSI which are not free as per the free software definition. The open source definition allows for further restrictions like price, type of contribution and origin of the contribution, e.g. the case of the NASA Open Source Agreement, which requires the code to be "original" work.
There are two main types of open source licenses: permissive and copyleft. Permissive licenses tend to have fewer restrictions on use of the licensed code than copyleft licenses. Here's a full breakdown.
The most popular copyleft open source licenses, in order of restrictiveness, are AGPL, GPL, LGPL, EPL, and Mozilla: The GNU General Public License (GPL) preserves license notifications and copyright terms and is suitable for commercial, patent, and private use.
Yes, there are important differences among the different licenses available. To explain them here, as you asked, would be like reinventing the wheel.
I suggest looking at the site @raphael75 suggested: Choose an open source license
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