I love open source software. When I first started down the long path to becoming a developer, I learned by reading code. I spent hours deciphering the various "Shop Banners" on Neopets that they had customized with IE specific CSS. When I wanted to do something, I would just ask a question on a forum and learn from the code posted. When I started learning a new language, I would go through some basic tutorials that someone had posted for free. What helped me more than anything else, were developers who posted code.

So you can imagine just how happy I was when years ago GitHub not only appeared, but quickly became prominent. They were not the first place to host code (Google Code, Sourceforge.. heck even PHPClasses did it), but they were the first who seemed to put code first. They understood that as a developer I care about the code. GitHub is not really meant for non-developers and they understood that their audience cared about the code. The made one of the greatest choices I've ever seen - anyone can put code up on GitHub for FREE as long as it's publicly accessible. This lead to a huge spurt in people sharing code online.

Of course, with all the code being put online, we have a whole new problem - Licensing. See, for some reason people want to put their code online - and then they want to control what happens after someone sees it. The idea of making your code public, letting them download it, and then telling them what they can and can't do with it seems silly and impossible to police.

For a time I was a huge believer in Copyleft. The idea that I am making this free, so feel free to use it... as long as your product remains free as well. While it's nice in theory, lately I've come to the conclusion that this is a restrictive license. It goes against what I believe Open Source really is.

I don't think Open Source is just having your source code available to the public. It's having your source code available to the public sans licensing to allow anyone to use and adapt your software as they require.

From now on, I think all my projects will be released under MIT licensing.