TAKES · Morgan answers

Which license should we pick?

Which license should we pick?“Apache 2.0. I want the patent grant in writing.”Morgan Reed, The Threat Modeler

💡 WHY MORGAN IS RIGHT

Short permissive licenses say little about patents. Apache 2.0 includes an explicit patent license from every contributor and terminates it for anyone who sues over patents in the work. That matters for companies that hold patents, accept outside contributions or ship code into litigious industries. It also has a clear contribution clause, so whatever an outsider submits is licensed on the same terms. The longer text buys real protection.

✅ RIGHT WHEN

Contributors or users hold patents, or the project will accept outside contributions at scale.

🚩 TOO FAR WHEN

A ten-line shell script gets a patent analysis and a NOTICE file.

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