From: Kyle Schmitt <kyleaschmitt@...>
Date: 2009-04-09T22:38:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Why ruby license?

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Johan Gustav <johan.postbox@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. Why  has Ruby  its own license and are not licensed under something
> like the Apache license?

I hate to answer so flippantly, but, because.

It's the same reason that we have BSD and MIT licenses.  At the heart
of them, they are almost the same (nobody kill me for generalizing :)
but they feel different, have a different flavor to them.

It's a matter more of tastes than anything else.  Is it to you're
liking that your name is always attached, that people can easily use
it along side commercial or non commercial code, do you want to make
it easy or difficult to be bundled?

Unless you're really sure of the future of your project, it doesn't
really matter.  Pretty much all of the "open source" licenses are
compatible at some level.  You can move a project from one license to
another, even to a proprietary one.  Which license depends on how hard
it is, but I think it's always possible.

This page may help you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licences

--Kyle