Licensing question #1
Description
I'd like to use your application in my projects, and I'd also like to make some contributions.
One problem for me is that you do not state the license of MSBuildExplorer (neither "All rights reserved", nor a standard one like the MIT License) in a LICENSE.txt of some kind. Therefore, there is a legal uncertainty when using your application. This is a problem, especially in corporate environments, that prevents people to use your application.
The website ChooseALicense.com (more detailed list here) provides a list of open source licenses, and information on when to choose which of them.
Personally, I'd be glad if it's something permissive like the MIT or the Apache license that also permits it to be used and modified in commercial environments, without having to disclose the modified sources.
See e.g. fsprojects/Paket for an exemplary usage of the MIT License.
Update: After looking around a bit, I found that you refer to the MIT License in the About dialog; I think that it would be good to refer to the license both in the about dialog, on the website and in a LICENSE.txt in the source repository root.
Knowing that the software is supposedly licensed as MIT clears things up a bit, but some confusion remains:
- The about dialog states MSBuildExplorer is licensed under the MIT License.
- But it also says "This software is provided as freeware", which is a bit confusing, because "freeware" often means "closed source, but free-to-use" (although I agree that this is a minor nitpick).
- More confusingly, all source files state on top:
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// <copyright file="MSBuildHelper.cs">(c) Mike Fourie. All other rights reserved.</copyright>
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
which confuses me because of All other rights reserved..