Student Information Processing Board @ MIT

This page was migrated from the old website and has not been manually reviewed, or is here for historical purposes. We make no guarantees that the content is up-to-date or reflects SIPB's current views. Contact sipb-www@mit.edu if anything is broken or you have other questions or feedback.

We recommend that software projects receiving organizational support from SIPB and software developed for SIPB services be free software, with a public source code repository and a documented way of accepting contributions from the community.

In particular, we recommend that the default license for source code and packaging for a SIPB project or service be either:

  1. the MIT license (also known as the “Expat” or “X11” license), or
  2. the GNU General Public License, permitting the use of version 2 or, at the licensee’s option, any later version,

unless there is a compelling reason to use another license.

In addition, we recommend that projects have a publicly-readable source code repository, a public bug tracker, and directions on how to get involved with development linked from their home page, README, or equivalent starting point.

Advice on how to license software packages and current best practices for collaboration with the community is available on a separate page.