So you've made something cool and it's time to release it. These seem to be the options at hand:
1. Release under a permissive license (MIT, BSD) and:
- Have everyone and their grandma use it.
- Die poor
2. Release under a copyleft license (GPL) and:
- No company is going to use or contribute to it, unless they can somehow clearly separate it from what they see as their intellectual property. Or just hide it where nobody sees it.
- Die poor
3. Release it under a commercial license and:
- Get bashed on HN for doing so
- Nobody uses it
- Probably die poor
4. Dual license it as GPL and commercial and:
- Sue everybody as they are just taking the GPL version and never looking back. Especially if they can hide it somewhere.
- Die poor
Pick your poison.
1. Release under a permissive license (MIT, BSD) and:
2. Release under a copyleft license (GPL) and: 3. Release it under a commercial license and: 4. Dual license it as GPL and commercial and: Pick your poison.