3

I find it ironic that the tag has 794 questions. I am curious though as to where someone can go to ask "developers" questions on the GPL especially since tons of lawyers don't know how to read those licenses very well. Where to go?

Example: I had to argue over the junit and eclipse licenses quite a while back and finally convinced the lawyer that we could use it internally at a very large telecom company. Developers need to ask developers and gain understanding from peers before talking to a lawyer. (And talking to other developers helped me to talk to that lawyer.)

I am guessing that questions on licenses will continue be asked on SO primarily because this is where developers are. When developers leave SO, that is when licensing questions will stop being asked.

Personally, I like developers asking licensing questions on here and I respond with what knowledge I do have to those questions as we are all on SO to help our peers.

Improve this question
2
  • 4
    Licensing issues are tangential to development. Developers deal with them, certainly, but they also deal with servers and FTP clients and desktop OSes, etc. which are all off topic. Since SO is primarily geared toward programming-specific topics, I think licensing questions would be off topic for the site.
    – George Cummins
    Jul 26, 2013 at 20:30
  • you didn't answer my question at all which is where to go? The answer for FTP and OS's is serverfault.com and that is clear. Where to go for licensing was never clear to alot of people...at least 794 other people if not more who didn't ask the question but just searched. I go like @Bill The Lizard's answer below though which is SO's programmers site.
    – Dean Hiller
    Jul 29, 2013 at 12:00

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
10

Software Engineering accepts some licensing questions, including about the GPL. (I've already asked the moderators there, and they tell me licensing questions are squarely on-topic.)

licensing - Questions about the implementation of software licenses on software, including questions about open-source licenses.

gpl - Questions about the GNU General Public License

For more in-depth questions about the usage of open-source licenses, you can ask on the Open Source site.

Improve this answer
4
  • oh, so is programmers also for questions like which technology you think is better as well....I had never seen anyone refer any questions or move those question to programmers(ie. the legal nor tech X vs. tech Y questions). I have been on SO for quite a while and never really knew there was a difference. I imagine 90% of the SO community does not know the diff between programmers and SO and never bothers to look like me.
    – Dean Hiller
    Jul 29, 2013 at 11:58
  • @DeanHiller No, questions about which technology you think is better are off-topic anywhere on the Stack Exchange network. See the Programmers Help Center for what kinds of questions you can ask there.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jul 29, 2013 at 12:06
  • I am sorry to hear that, I notice many who will continue to disobey this rule until a better outlet for those questions is found. Even I think I will still ask on SO as SO has the most eyeballs and I don't know of a better place to ask. SO is the only outlet that seems to get some pretty good answers on tech X vs. tech Y....sorry, but users tend to try to get their needs met and SO meets that need even if some don't like that. If I am pointed to a great resource to ask those questions, I will use it too, but until then, SO works great.
    – Dean Hiller
    Jul 29, 2013 at 14:12
  • @DeanHiller Oh, that's easy. Slant was created for that.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jul 29, 2013 at 14:18

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .