Friday, September 7, 2012

The least restrictive open source license?

I am working on a program to predict protein chemical shifts and predict protein structural features from chemical shifts. I want my work to be available to anyone, for any purpose, free of charge. Would be nice if the work would remain attributed to the respective authors, and finally I don't want to get sued under any circumstances.
Although widely used, the least restrictive open source software license is certainly not the GNU General Public License. I wouldn't mind having my code used for commercial purposes, for instance.

I also considered something along the lines of what is suggested here:
Steal this code and use it for whatever you want. No support or guarantee is provided or implied - use at your own risk. Attribution would be nice but not essential.
However, after searching around a bit, I settled for the "2-clause Simplified BSD License":
Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
   list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
   and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 
Only question is why the 2nd half is written entirely in CAPS!