I am part of the small group of people who actually skim through the licensing agreements provided when installing software. Consequently, I know that I cannot use Java in nuclear facilities, that I cannot send results from a particular program to any countries in a specified list, and that I do not have a life. However, I am certainly not a lawyer, and there are definitely many nuances in the licenses that I am not aware of. This is important in software engineering since we commonly have to select a license for the code that we write.
Developers often pick from a number of commonly used licenses, and the work that I will be doing shortly will have to be licensed as well. The GNU GPL is the most commonly used free software license with the requirement that the source code must remain available and that any project using software covered under the GPL must itself use the GPL. The Apache license removes the source code disclosure and sublicensing requirements while adding an explicit restriction on using trademarks from contributors. The Eclipse license would require my software to make my source code available as the GPL does, but unlike the GPL sublicensing is allowed.
At least for the time being, I will be using the MIT license. I freely admit that the primary reason for this selection is that the license is only half a page long on my monitor and thus I can actually understand most of it. Essentially, under the MIT license anyone who uses my code can do anything they wish with it so long as I receive proper attribution, and as I do not have a great deal of knowledge and experience with these licenses it seems best to stick with something reasonably simple. The BSD and ISC licenses are very similar to the MIT license and could serve as alternatives later on. Since I am currently using Eclipse as my IDE of choice, I will also have to look further into the Eclipse license as Eclipse is unsurprisingly covered under the Eclipse license.
The author of this post (hereafter referred to as “Branden” because that is his name) reserves the right to modify the text above, especially under circumstances wherein those responsible for the creation, maintenance, and enforcement of the aforementioned licensing agreement endeavor to file lawsuits against Branden. Under no circumstances shall Branden be held liable for any damages that may result from the reading of this posting, although Branden may consider a loophole wherein the psychologists who profit from providing therapy for those who have to read the text above may express their gratitude through financial means.