Lately I've been working on a light temporal sampling algorithm that might be able to avoid some aliasing by adjusting the sampling rate. I usually do things like this strictly in MatLab, because it makes it overwhelmingly easy to build and run these kind of simulations, and then explore the results in potentially interactive graphs. But there are a few problems with that approach:

1. The MatLab IDE is overwhelmingly slow to startup and to compile and run programs on every machine I have ever run it on.
2. MatLab, while somewhat popular in certain fields, is rather esoteric in that I couldn't share my code widely and expect people to readily understand what it does.
3. MatLab is rather expensive, at $149 USD initial cost for the "Home" version, $45 USD for additional "toolboxes" (which are just libraries), and a $100 USD yearly fee if you want updates.

So I set out to find a cheaper alternative, with a much wider user base, that includes similar tools and libraries, and is built on a widely known language. Of course, I turned to Python. Problems with the open source community having multiple, disjoint, and sometimes incompatible solutions to the same problems aside, I happened to stumble upon Anaconda and it's repository, an IDE called Spyder (which openly seeks to be similar to MatLab), a group of visualization libraries organized under the PyViz group, and a light and fast IDE for quick experiments; VS Code.

Well, after retouching my Python skills after years of neglect (version 3.6 was on the horizon the last time I used Python), I installed VS Code and started working on some personal project. Today, while installing Conda to get ready to set up a full environment to replace MatLab, I started reading through their repository listings. In their table of libraries, they have a column for "License". So, after years of refusing to care about license agreements, I did what any person who's waiting on something to install would do: I started reading.

The BSD 3-clause license

The license, which has the text:

Is a rather common open source license agreement which would allow users of the product to freely distribute it provided that some conditions are met:

1. Any distribution of source code must also share your license
2. Any distribution of an executable must also contain the BSD 3-clause.
3. You cannot claim that the creators of the product endorse your product.

Well, I have a few gripes with this. And some of these gripes are common across many licenses. I'm not sure of the best way to go about stating them, so I'll just list them below.

1. If you want your code to be actually useful, don't demand that users of your library maintain a list of license agreements for what's presumably sharable software.
2. The second clause is ambiguous. Does it mean "Your binaries must contain metadata that describes this license", or does it mean that, upon running the executable, a reasonable attempt has been made to inform the user that they are using the product under this license? That ambiguity alone is enough to merit it's own gripe.
   1. If the first, what is the point? Very few people go around downloading executables and then reading the binary files associated with them. This is a useless requirement.
   2. If the latter, that's just conceited. If you expect someone who uses your code in their product to go around advertising you, you will surely be saddened when you find that no useful products use your code.
3. The third clause is kind of a weird one. Clauses one and two are all about how you are required to give the creators of the software credit in your application. But the third clause is all about how the creators of the software don't want anything to do with your application. Presumably, what this actually means is "If your product is popular and agreed with, I want to be tied to it. But if, on the other hand, your product is a matter of public contention, I would like to be able to distance myself from it."

Which brings me to the major point of this post:

Sharable software shouldn't be restricted in use. Don't force your users into some ethical contract hidden behind notions of "freely sharing" useful applications.

For your reference, this is, in my opinion, the only useful license to use on projects that you wish to be usable by others. It is a modified version of the MIT License:

Quote

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.