MultiHub Forum

I'm developing a software library that I plan to release as open source, but I'm struggling to choose the right license for my goals. I want to encourage widespread adoption and contribution from both individuals and companies, but I also need to prevent a large corporation from simply taking the code, making proprietary modifications, and selling it without contributing back. For developers who have navigated open source licensing, what are the key trade-offs between permissive licenses like MIT and protective copyleft licenses like GPL v3? How do you assess the compatibility of different licenses when your project might depend on other libraries, and what practical steps do you take to ensure compliance and proper attribution?

Key decision: aim for broad adoption vs ensuring openness of derivatives. If you want the widest use, permissive licenses like MIT or Apache 2.0 are usually best. If you want to ensure downstream improvements stay open, GPLv3 (or LGPL for libraries) is the tool. Compatibility: MIT is compatible with GPLv3; you can incorporate MIT-licensed code into a GPLv3 project, but the final distribution would then be under GPLv3. If you depend on GPLv2-only libraries or AGPL, you’re in a different ball game. Best practice: build a dependency inventory, choose one license for your project (or dual-license if necessary) and include a clear LICENSE file, a NOTICE if required, and headers in each source file.