Re: For thoughts: fair license

[Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org>]

".name"?  I'm surprised anyone can use that TLD with a straight face.  :)

On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 09:28:12PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
> I'm really not sure what this license actually improves though, since
> the MIT license specifically grants any privilege that can be
> excercised by those who are not actually the author. [And, at least in
> my opinion, license proliferation is something that should be avoided
> at all costs.]

Well, I can name one minor problem of the MIT license: it requires that
the license text be preserved.  For most uses, this isn't a problem; but
in the case where you're using bits of code under the license and releasing
binaries, it's odd to carry along in your documentation a paragraph about
rights granted to users for a bit of code that they weren't given source
to.  It's just a waste of manual space--sometimes a fair bit, with license
proliferation preventing most merging, with everyone making their own trivial
edits.

Many people using the MIT license (including myself) really want nothing more
than their name to stick around, which the copyright notice is sufficient for.
For example, the PNG license says "This Copyright notice may not be removed or
altered from any source or altered source distribution", not requiring it for
binaries.

(I havn't considered this to be enough of a problem to consider making a new
license for it, though.  License proliferation, and worse, people writing
licenses without counsel, is worse.)

-- 
Glenn Maynard