What license should we use?
Obsidian is currently using the MIT license, and seeing as how we haven't released it yet we still have an opportunity to change it. Reading which open source license should you use it might become a topic of discussion for our group. The main thing that we would have to discuss is how much freedom people have on the choice of returning changes to the code base back to the main developers. This idea has been coined Copyleft. Copyleft is the idea that instead of copyrighting the software to not allow anyone to modify or redistribute the product you are allowing people to work on it as if it was in the public domain (which some developers do), but still give someone ownership. The main owner of the software is allowing you access to make modifications, but when you publish your modifications it must abide by the same rules of modification that you received from the source.
The different licenses have specific uses and rules to them, an example of this would be the ability to use a copyleft license product (or parts of code) in a proprietary system. Licenses like this include the Microsoft Reciprocal License and the Mozilla Public License. If you want to allow unlimited freedom with the software the MIT and the 3-clause BSD license have no copyleft and no discussion of patents. Both of these licenses are out there for anyone to tinker with and use in any fashion they want because of the academic ties that they both grew from. If you want to make sure that every modification is published, and everyone who uses components gives their users information about the component the GPL licenses are most likely the best ones. Another factor we could possibly use is to change the IP/license depending on the entity using it. We could have specific licenses depending on if this is for a company, student, or personal use. We will have to discuss as a group what type of license we like the most.
The different licenses have specific uses and rules to them, an example of this would be the ability to use a copyleft license product (or parts of code) in a proprietary system. Licenses like this include the Microsoft Reciprocal License and the Mozilla Public License. If you want to allow unlimited freedom with the software the MIT and the 3-clause BSD license have no copyleft and no discussion of patents. Both of these licenses are out there for anyone to tinker with and use in any fashion they want because of the academic ties that they both grew from. If you want to make sure that every modification is published, and everyone who uses components gives their users information about the component the GPL licenses are most likely the best ones. Another factor we could possibly use is to change the IP/license depending on the entity using it. We could have specific licenses depending on if this is for a company, student, or personal use. We will have to discuss as a group what type of license we like the most.
What hosting should we use?
Obsidian has been using CofC's SVN server during the development that Hunter has already put into it. Now we need to pick what infrastructure we are going to want, as well as who is going to be hosting it. The first one that comes to mind is keeping it on the SVN at CofC. The only downside that I can see with this is that if we wanted to add people to the project we would have to develop a portal for a way of giving usernames/passwords to potential contributors. The other point I would have to single out is the fact that there are already plenty of people who offer this service, why try to confuse people with a new system/repository when they most likely already used to the other repository services.
The main repository services that open source developers like to use include Sourceforge, GitHub, Google Code, Gitorious, and Bitbucket. They all allow you to add your source code as well as a download page to allow people easy access to the binary files. Each has their strengths and uses, but we are thinking of going with Google Code. We liked it for the built in Wiki and issue tracker as well as the capability to integrate Google Groups to allow for easy management of the contributors. The one benefit that I like from GitHub is the idea of a very social environment, and by that I mean that it is very easy for someone to develop their own branch and create a patch that we could then integrate with the base. This question will most likely just come down to personal preferences of everyone in the group.
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