License For (Mostly) Open Source Website / Service

Posted by Ryan Sullivan on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ryan Sullivan
Published on 2011-11-16T01:16:07Z Indexed on 2011/11/16 1:50 UTC
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I have an interesting setup and am not sure how to license a website. I know this is not legal advice, and I am not asking for any.

There are so many different Open Source Licenses and I do not have the time to read every last one to see which best fits my situation. Really, I am looking for suggestions and a nudge in the right direction.

My setup is: I give away for free version of my web service with a clean website interface. The implementation I use in the actual web site is (almost) identical to what I give away. The main service works the exactly the same way, but the website interface to manage features in the service is fairly different. Really the web interfaces have the same exact backend, and the front ends accomplish the same tasks, but the service I offer on my site is very rich and uses a good deal of javascript, where I kept the interface in the version I give away as simple and javascript-less as possible. Mostly so it is easy to understand and integrate into other sites.

I am not entirely sure how I should license this. It is more like I develop an open source service but have a separate site built upon it. I like the GPLv3 but I am not sure if I can use it in this case especially since I am making some money off of google ad's on the site and plan on using amazon affiliates as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I do want to open it up as much as possible. But I still want to be able to continue with my own implementation. Thanks in advance for any information or help anyone can provide.

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