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Which license should we pick?

Which license should we pick?“Whatever Legal already approved. The list is on the wiki.”Pat Williams, The Enterprise Adult

💡 WHY PAT IS RIGHT

Every license has implications for patents, liability, compatibility with dependencies and the company's commercial terms, and the legal team has usually worked through them already. A pre-approved license means no new review, no surprise from outside counsel and a consistent answer when customers or acquirers ask. Engineers should not be improvising legal strategy on a repository settings page. The approved list exists precisely so nobody has to.

✅ RIGHT WHEN

The company has a legal team, customers who ask, or a deal that will be diligenced.

🚩 TOO FAR WHEN

The approved list was written in 2016, contains one license, and nobody owns updating it.

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