Ask HN: How should I open-source my iOS app?
My friend and I just released out first iPhone app, "Silent Shout" (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/silent-shout/id439580131?mt=8&ls=1), and we want to open-source it. I've never open-sourced anything, and have never done much more than fork open-source projects and modify them for my own purposes, so I'm quite ignorant about the process of open-sourcing projects.
Our goal is to allow people to use the code and learn from it for any non-commercial purposes. We want to retain the right to earn money from the project (through future in-app purchases, or adding a price to the app for v2). I'd love for this to be a collaborative project, rather than something like Canabalt (https://github.com/ericjohnson/canabalt-ios) which seems like its simply a one-time code giveaway. Is there a license which fits our case, and aside from setting up a public git repo (which I'm in the process of doing, https://github.com/workwithnano/silent_shout), does HN have any other advice for us?
1 comment
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 11.7 ms ] threadYou own copyright on the work, and there's no giving away those rights by licensing it. Furthermore, there's nothing stopping you from granting someone else a different license to the source (one permitting commercial use in consideration of a fee paid to you, for example).
The license permits others to do what you've licensed them to do. It places no restrictions on you, the copyright holder, except that you cannot revoke a license for code already released to someone unless the license permits such action (which no open source licenses do, as far as I know).