DSE: When in Rome ..... or "What software license should I use?"

So far I've released all my django-apps using the GPL license. This is not by accident. GPL, FSF, RMS and the whole philosophy of free software was and still is important to me. It was the main motivation for my departure from Windows to Linux about 11-12 years ago.

After posting a question about what license to choose for my django-apps and seeing the amount of debate it generated I recognize that this is a pretty sensitive issue, but it also made it clear, especially after Jacob Kaplan-Moss posted a reply, that there's much more to choosing a software license than just the legal side. It also sends a strong signal into whatever community you're active in, in this case, the django community, where the more permissive BSD license is mostly used. 

So I've decided to release the forthcoming DSE version 2.0 under the same license as django. I'm still a strong believer in free software and the GPL, but I also think it's important to recognize the social values of the community I want to be a part of and contribute to. So my plan is to release all strictly django-related software using the BSD license in the future.

My motivation for releasing my private software development projects as open source has allways been selfish; I hope that if my software is any good somebody else will use it too. And then they find bugs, add features and hopefully make those enhancements available for me as well, so we can make the software better - and everybody wins.

If I had to make a living from my private projects my thoughts about this might change and I respect that people don't agree with me and/or believe they're better of choosing a different licensing scheme. I got a fulltime job in a Windows-only, purely propriertary software company paying my bills so open source is just a hobby.

To wrap this up; a good friend of mine told me that the people who want to contribute and give feedback, post source online, share new ideas etc - they'll do it no matter what license you choose ( at least in most cases - it's obvious that the GPL is sort of a repellent for some, even other open source developers ). On the other side; the people who don't respect a certain license or don't contribute in a community won't suddenly do so just because I use a specific license anyhow.