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Comment by simpleascouldbe | Hacker News Reader

I think having a hard-coded drop down for actual licenses is a good idea, because then we can do the searching and filtering you suggest.

I don't like grouping them into 'types'. I think that's too much of a value judgement. Any enterprise's legal department is going to approve or disapprove of specific licenses, so that's what developers like me will be looking for.

Potential issues: * Modified licenses (eg: JSLint's MIT + "do no evil" clause)

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A list of every type if license can't work, because it needs to be constantly updated and people may want to write their own, etc.

That's why the general type makes much more sense for a quick glimpse if some code is probably suitable license-wise for your project.

You're against the GPL, but you're okay with people writing their own new licenses?

If one feels that the license is flawed, then why not? It's possible to not like the viral clauses for various reasons, such as incompatibility with other viral licenses, but feel there is some issue, like patents, that are not well-covered under the BSD license, for example.

They could just pull the licenses from the OSI's list (http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical). And people writing their own licenses contributes to the license proliferation problem, so should be generally discouraged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation).

List the most popular licences and have an "Other" option. Simple.

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