What Grygus said.

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I've seen more screwball licenses come out of Microsoft than just about anywhere. Some of them are downright hilarious -- they try to open up a codebase for some use, say teaching or self-exploration (no, not that Self), and then trip over themselves with internal inconsistencies trying to F.Y. the FSF.

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One of my early observations in looking at free software licenses is that you can tell what the author is concerned about by reading the license. It's what I call fear-greed analysis.

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  • FSF wants to free software, and is paranoid about hoarding.
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  • BSD/MIT want to promote adoption w/o regard for proprietary/free use, and are concerned about liability (as are virtually all licenses) and/or attribution.
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  • Apache wants the above but makes a gratuitous dig at the FSF (intentional retention of the advertising clause).
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  • Perl wants confusion to spread freely, with attribution.
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  • IBM is paranoid about patents.
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  • Mozilla wants to preserve a business model, in as free a framework as possible.
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  • AT&T wanted to get anything out the door, and settled on the best license they could wring from their lawyers (Plan9OS)
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  • Sun is petrified over losing control (Java II)
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  • Apple is like Sun, but with ego problems
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  • Corel was concerned with canadian law and minor participation in contracts.
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  • The OSL/ASL are concerned about the enforceability of free software licenses without use of contract law.
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  • Microsoft is scared shitless by the GPL.
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And so it goes.