#34 License ZING!

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 29, 2017
It’s been a while since I’ve spoken about software licensing. If you’ve been in the community for any appreciable amount of time, you’ll see that there are two licensing-based brainworms that tend to crop up on a regular basis. The first is the fear that some company might swoop in and buy our friendly little open source program and put it behind a wall. The other is the notion that free software licenses like the GPL are harmful to the program. Although there’s a rational background for either of these positions, I think that they’re both ill-founded.

Show Notes

TL;DR: In most cases, it’s pretty much impossible for a third party of any sort to come in and block access to an open source tool. They can make things painful and annoying, but they can’t act as a block. As for the relicensing issue, that too is also highly unlikely… but it’s also a very short-sighted perspective that, in my humble opinion, will ultimately serve as a detriment to the app (and the open source community around it)… especially in the case of creative tools.

That’s my thoughts on it at least, I’d love to know yours.

Also, as I mentioned in the intro and outro, this website now has a Resources section. Currently there’s a page for Tools that you can use in your creative projects and a page for Books for learning more about specific programs. I’d love to hear what you think of this addition to the site and what other things you think I should add in there. Just hit me up with a comment!

Hosts

Jason van Gumster

Jason van Gumster

“I make stuff. I make stuff up. On occasion, I stuff-up what I make. I don’t do much stuff with make-up… though I’m not above trying. I work in all kinds of media: words, animation, ink, coffee, wood, video. And, of course, I’m really passionate about open source and open content, so that’s what I talk about in this show. Books I’ve written and other creative experiments I’ve made can be seen on monsterjavaguns.com.”