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General Discussion

Posted by Joseph Fusco
Joseph Fusco
9,577 Points

How should I license my code? Every explanation I've come across is pretty complicated. GNU, MIT, etc.

It would be nice to see a treehouse course on this in the near future to break it down for everyone.

1 Answer

Milo Winningham
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Milo Winningham
Web Development Techdegree Student 3,317 Points
Milo Winningham
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Milo Winningham
Web Development Techdegree Student 3,317 Points

We cover licenses in our Copyright Basics course. choosealicense.com is also a nice guide from GitHub. The MIT and GNU GPL seem to be the most popular licenses in the web development community.

The most important choice is probably whether to require people that build something with your code to release their changes under the same license so others can benefit from it. This is the primary function of the GNU GPL, used by software like the Linux kernel and WordPress.

If you just want to give away your code and don't care if someone incorporates it into a proprietary product, the MIT license is probably your best bet. The Apache and BSD licenses are also very similar.