Re: Some hard numbers on licenses used by elisp packages

[Karl Fogel]

Jonas Bernoulli <address@hidden> writes:
>Github actively encourages users to specify the license.  (Yes, they
>suggest free software as well as open source licenses.)

There's a difference?

If you're thinking that "free software" == "copyleft" and "open source" == 
"non-copyleft", that's actually not the case.  For example, the GPL is both a 
free software and an open source license, and the same is true of (say) the MIT 
license.

This FAQ item at the OSI explains this in more detail: 
https://opensource.org/faq#free-software.  (I believe that FAQ entry explains 
it in such a way that the FSF would agree with the facts & history as presented 
there, although perhaps not with the philosophical equivalence implied.)

I completely agree with you that GitHub now actively encourages people to apply 
a free software license when publishing their code.  GitHub does this both via 
UI nudges and via their public posts and comments on the topic (see 
https://help.github.com/articles/licensing-a-repository/ for example).

-Karl