Choosing a licence for open-source code

[silverblade]

I'm working on something at the moment which is open-source, with no licence.

I'd like to use a licence for it, but am unsure which ones to choose.

I want to let people use the software and modify it, and would like to incorporate modifications into my own app. But I'd also like to let people take the code and use bits of it for their own projects - closed or open-source.

I understand the LGPL allows this to some extent.

What I want to do is allow everyone the freedom to do what they want, without restricting open-source OR closed-source developers too much.

What licences might be appropriate?

[fsck]

The BSD license. Free as in "Free to do what the hell you like with my code". But that's just my opinion, there is an excellent resource for licensing Open Source at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.php

[Jman]

BSD is also known as "copycenter" as in take it down to the copy center and make as many copies as you want."

Since GPL is popular, here's a list of licenses and how they compare to the GPL.