In the news resources g u e s t s p e a k e r s o f t

IN THE NEWS
RESOURCES
G U E S T S P E A K E R
S O F T W A R E I S S O M E T H I N G T H A T A C T U A L L Y I M P R O V E S O R I N C R E A S E S I N
V A L U E T H E M O R E I T I S U S E D . O P E N S O U R C I N G Y O U R C O D E M E A N S
T H A T I T I S G O I N G T O B E U S E D B Y T H E W I D E S T P O S S I B L E A U D I E N C E .

18
© University of Waterloo and others
As mentioned, code is one of the few things that the more you use it the more valuable it becomes.
Open sourcing your code makes it available for free for others to read and to use in their products and
applications. If you want your code to be widely used, then open sourcing is definitely the most
straightforward way to do that.
The third reason is that open sourcing your code allows you to share your code with your peers. This
means that others can give you feedback on your code. As well, the using of open-source code also
allows you to read and understand other people’s programs . Therefore, in both directions - producing
and consuming open-source code - it allows you to improve your craft as a software developer and as a
student.
My previous remarks explain why it’s important to open source your code but then there’s also the
question “ how do I open source my code ?”. It’s quite common for people to think that simply posting
code on a hosting service like Github means that the code is open source - t hat’s actually not true.
To open source your code, you have to put a licence on that code because, unlike what you might
assume, if you do not put a licence on your code under the worldwide copyright law, it means that
your code is “all - rights reserved”. “All - rights reserved” means that nobody is allowe d to use that code.
If you genuinely want people to make use of your code as open source, then you must use an open-
source licence. The best way to know if your licence is an open-source licence is go to opensource.org
and see if the licence is on the list.
There are a wide variety of open-source licence choices depending on what it is you want to accomplish
with your code, who your audience is, and even what your beliefs are. Depending on these factors, and
others, you might choose a different licence.
On e of the common and popular classifications of licences is what’s called the “permissive licences”.
These basically allow people to use your code, not contribute back at all, and effectively use it for
whatever they want. Examples of permissive licences include the MIT licence, the BSD licence, and the
Apache licence, version two. So if that’s what you want to do with your code , then those are great
licences to choose from.
At the other end of the continuum, are the reciprocal licences. These licences say that people are
welcome to use your code but if they do, they need to choose the same licence for their code. The
best-known example of this style of licence is the GNU general public licence or the GPL.