Slashdot points to what turns out to be a very brief FSF article on how to choose a license.
Basically: copyleft everything!!!!1!!
Um.
If, e.g., AGROS were under GPL, rather than basically a one-clause BSD license, it would have zero installed base at this point. My clients generally don't want to make their highly-proprietary source code, which gets linked into a binary blob with the AGROS code, available to just anyone who buys their toasters. They don't necessarily even want their customers to know there's a computer under the hood.
The FSF also doesn't address other odd-but-common cases, such as hardware-description code (Verilog, VHDL, etc.). In looking for open-source modules which can be incorporated into FPGA logic for a toaster, again combined with modules which embody trade secrets, I have to be really careful about the licenses; LGPL may be OK, but GPL is of course Right Out, and even BSD-style licenses can be problematic, depending on which clauses are included.
I'll be releasing some of my own generally-useful Verilog modules at some point, under some license that boils down to "do whatever you want, but don't remove the copyright notice and don't blame me if it doesn't work for you."
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