Software Licenses Metamap
= Comparative mindmap via http://metamaps.cc/maps/32
Compiled by Ishan Shapiro.
Discussion
Ishan Shapiro:
"I've started making a metamap of the most popular licenses, to evaluate the pros and cons of each. ... GPL is not really applicable for providing a platform that is served on a network, like Metamaps or Netention. This is because GPL 3.0 has something they call the "Application Service Provider" loophole - which basically voids GPL in this context of webapps and makes it equivalent to a permissive license. Anyone who does want to stand behind a strong copyleft license AND wants to provide software as a service in principle should license their work AGPL.
Obviously as we get closer to being able to store everything client-side, not server side, the application service provider loophole becomes less important, but well, this is something that will become clearer as the personal cloud movement gets off the ground in the next 2-4 years...
LGPL does enable a certain amount of linking, but it is also not optimized for cloud computing in general. Only the AGPL is - so lets cut those out as they don't serve our purposes because they're not accurate enough. There have been calls across the web for an "ALGPL" license that even the creator of the AGPL is taking seriously, but says that the drafting of this is complex." (Sensorica mailing list, september 2013)