Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
As long as whoever uses this license understands they are not, in fact,
putting it in the public domain (copyright is retained)... and that this is
not, in fact, a license (waver of implied warranty is a contractual
provision)... and that the license is not irrevocable (after 35 years the
author or heirs of the author can revoke any license, and the right cannot be
waived)... then I guess this is a fine license.
But I really don't understand the obsession with trying to put works in the
Public Domain. Like it or not, copyright is a product of statute, not
natural law, and the statutes of pretty much every industrial nation have
been written to eliminate the public domain other than the expiration of the
term. This is why we have things like the BSD, GPL, and the X11/MIT license.
-Sean
On Friday 03 June 2005 10:34 am, Anonymous wrote:
> I have seen quite a few people who want to licence their software as though
> it is in the public domain. they are often told to go with a bsd or x11
> licence. They usually say they don't even whant the restrition of forcing
> people to include the notice.
> The reasoning for the use of the common licences is that they are well
> understood. Therefore in an attempt to satify all parties I propose the
> following licence for use in those types of situations. The licence I
> propose consists of the MIT licence below, excluding the part in the quare
> brackets. This licence therefore is well understood, and does not have the
> single restriction of the MIT licence.
>
> Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
> 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, and to permit persons to whom the
> Software is furnished to do so[, subject to the following conditions:
>
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
> all copies or substantial portions of the Software].
>
> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
> AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
> LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
> FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
> DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
>
>
>
>
> Licence taken from http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
--
Sean Kellogg
2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law
GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association
Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org]
c: 206.498.8207 e: skellogg@u.washington.edu
w: http://probonogeek.blogspot.com
So, let go
...Jump in
...Oh well, what you waiting for?
...it's all right
...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
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