Just two cents:<p>1) It shows no differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3. It's not a good sign.<p>2) I would put shitloads of banners everywhere saying that you're using this site at your own risk.
Um, GPL2 helpfully doesn't include mention of including source in summary, although it's there in the blue box (under "must"). Also, for someone unfamiliar, it would be helpful to explain _which_ source: the library you're including or the entire source of your work which includes the GPL'd library.<p>"You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you retain this license, track changes/dates of in source files and keep it GPL."
BSD and MIT:<p><pre><code> Change License
This software allows you to switch licenses.
</code></pre>
No, only the copyright owner can change the license.
Some feedback:<p>1. The search is broken. I couldn't find the Apache license using a half-dozen tries, including searches like "Apache", "Apache2", and "ASL".<p>2. One of the big issues with open source licenses is knowing which licenses are compatible with what. Can I use the EPL with the ASL? What about the LGPL? That information is hard to find.
"Any" software license? Hardly. Although this is quite useful for the FOSS licenses they have now, what I really would like is to have all those licenses for commercial proprietary software to be translated into something clear. Same for websites and online services served through apps.
The creator of this site is reading all of your feedback. He gives his thanks, but warns that this site wasn't supposed to be ready to launch yet.<p>(I know him in RL, and right now new HN accounts cannot be created.)
Something which isn't commented on anywhere else:<p>The two more common uses of "shortly" indicate something is going to happen soon and that something was phrased in a curt, abrupt manner.<p>Almost all uses of shortly that mean "concise" also tend to have the curt, abrupt, somewhat negative connotation. The only times I've seen uses of shortly that have only the "brief" shade of meaning, there is still a connotation of something simple, that somehow someone has overlooked. (Example: "to put it shortly," which is interchangeable with, "to put it simply.")<p>Because of this, no native English speaker would title a such headline in a positive sense with the adjective "shortly" meaning brief.<p>Admittedly, this is confusing because "shortly" used in the sense of "happening soon" does often carry a positive connotation. Unfortunately, English is Byzantine and full of exceptions and connotations and not completely orthogonal. (It is orthogonal here from a strictly syntactic sense, but not from the common usage one.)
Perhaps some examples of licences could be good on the front page. I wasn't really sure what to search for, and all the ones I put in weren't found, and then I'm not a lawyer so I wouldn't be able to tl;dr very well.
Although this would qualify as a "Thanks" kind of response, I'd like to add a note on how much pain this solves for several people in my circle. We ended up several times searching and trying to find a single place for a summary of the licenses (opensource.org worked well in keeping everything else at the same place though).<p>This is something I would share and recommend.
Simple English Wikipedia has entries on some software licenses in plain english as well[0], although without such nice visualisation as at TL;DRLegal.<p>[0] E.g., <a href="http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License" rel="nofollow">http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License</a>)
Finally, what I've been looking for. No I can easily see some (at least the major) differences between licenses, or perform a very quick "is this library ok for commercial use?" assert
I'm missing some contact information on the page. The feedback button redirects me to some Google Moderator page, whatever that is, but aside from the black top bar the page stays blank. Yes, I already tried rebooting...<p>What I wanted to say is already commented here on HackerNews though: searching for "GPL" for example, you get a not-found. You'll indeed need to wait for suggestions to come up before you can click a licence. These suggestions should appear on the results page too.
Does the "embed options" button ever give more than a link? It seems a bit pointless as it is, as you can just copy that from the address bar.<p>Also, is there any approval process? If not, I think people should have to register to submit, have a "vouch" button, or something, so we know who we're trusting.<p>Finally, when all the fields in the submit form have validation errors, the submit button disappears.
I want to let you know that your site gets a reputation of -7.1 on a scale ranging from -10 to 10 on senderbase.org.<p>This is bad because my silly university blocks all websites with a reputation of less than -6, thus I was only able to see it through a proxy.<p>Note: I tried to get useful actual facts on why it is badly rated but I did not succeed.
Great ! That will prove really useful to me, as my mind refuses to store any information license-related..<p>Not convinced by the UI tough : a search box with a closed (& short) list of possibilities, really ?<p>PS: How can you write "summariZed in plain English" ? ;)
This is a great idea! I would agree with brixon that there is no need for a search box, yet, but I've been looking for something exactly like this. I'm sure you'll get the kinks worked out. Thanks!
Hey guys, launching in beta today.
Official launch thread is here, in case you want to support:
<a href="http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4219591" rel="nofollow">http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4219591</a>