Open Source Licenses with Matt McInnis, Tom Cudd, and Ray Deck
Season 9, Episode 3 | October 11, 2023Join hosts Bekah and Dan in this special episode where we sit down with Matt McInnis, Ray Deck, and Tom Cudd to explore the often overlooked but crucial topic of open source licenses. We'll discuss the nuances of choosing the right license for your project, the implications it has for contributors and maintainers, and the scenarios where leaving the license blank might actually be a strategic move.
This episode is brought to you by:
LevelUP Financial planning
We're grateful to be sponorsored by LevelUP Financial planning, who understands the importance of finding balance between having an awesome life today, and being confident and excited about your future possibilities. If you want to take your financial confidence to the next level, check out levelupfinancialplanning.com.
Matt McInnis
Full-stack developer (Rails+React) at Typist based in Toronto, Canada. Former artificial intelligence lead at IBM and Microsoft, mathematics professor at Centennial College and Saskatchewan Polytechnic. I really love brunch.
Tom Cudd
As an advocate for DevOps within teams and communities, I strive to bring positive change in the way Development and Operations teams work together. I love to help people learn about teams, leadership, infrastructure, cloud, and automation.
Ray Deck
Veteran leader of technology teams and startup companies over the last 20 years. Most recently founder of Statechange.ai, a learning community for solving the hardest 5% of no-code/low-code/AI-code challenges.
Show Notes:
Join hosts Bekah and Dan with guests Matt McInnis, Ray Deck, and Tom Cudd, as they chat about the complicated topic of open source software (OSS) licenses. They share insights into how to choose the appropriate license, how to understand licenses on other projects, and general guidelines for maintainers and contributors.
Links:
- ChooseALicense.com by GitHub
- Example of clarifying subfolders in the LICENSE: TensorFlow’s
modelsrepo. - Example of a License section in the README indicating what parts of the repo the license applies to: OpenAI’s Whisper model. “Whisper’s code and model weights are released under the MIT License.”
- Example of a paid product with an open source license: CraftCMS
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