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Open Source Licensing Guide

An educational guide to open source licensing, written for researchers, developers, and anyone who needs to understand licensing without a law degree.

Live site: (not yet deployed)

About

This guide explains open source licensing from first principles. It covers:

  • Concepts — Foundational ideas like libre vs gratis, permissive vs copyleft
  • Software Licenses — MIT, Apache, GPL, and others in detail
  • Creative Commons — Licenses for non-code works (data, docs, media)
  • Practical Guides — How to choose, use, and attribute properly
  • Lessons Learned — Historical case studies of licensing gone wrong

Voice and Approach

The guide is written from the perspective of a "graybeard" developer who's been in the industry since the beginning. This is a deliberate narrative device—see the Preface for context on why.

The voice is:

  • First-person, experienced, mentoring
  • Opinionated but fair
  • Focused on practical wisdom over legal precision
  • Willing to tell stories and share historical context

Building Locally

# Create virtual environment
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # or `venv\Scripts\activate` on Windows

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Serve locally
mkdocs serve

# Build static site
mkdocs build

Or use the build script:

./mkdocs-build.sh

Project Structure

docs/
├── index.md                 # Homepage
├── preface.md               # Author's note about voice and approach
├── concepts/                # Foundational concepts
├── licenses/                # Software licenses
│   ├── permissive/
│   ├── copyleft/
│   └── other/
├── creative-commons/        # CC licenses (separate from software)
├── guides/                  # Practical how-tos
├── lessons-learned/         # Historical case studies
├── reference/               # Quick comparison, glossary, sources
├── includes/                # Shared content (glossary definitions)
└── overrides/               # MkDocs Material theme customizations

License

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 — Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

You may share and adapt for non-commercial purposes with attribution.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on voice, citations, and technical patterns.

Author

Andrew Marx, with assistance from Claude (Anthropic).