Re: Choosing a License: GNU APL? AFL 3.0?
On Dec 30, 2007 10:58 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> I'm not sure I take your meaning in "copyright notices" being
> "protected". Copyright law protects any creative work (with
> jurisdiction-specific exceptions), not the legal notice on that
> work.
The AFL 3.0, for example, states:
'This Academic Free License (the "License") applies to any original
work of authorship (the "Original Work") whose owner (the "Licensor")
has placed the following licensing notice adjacent to the copyright
notice for the Original Work:
Licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0'
- http://opensource.org/licenses/academic.php
So I could use that as follows:
* * *
#!/bin/sh
# Copyright 2007, Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com
# Licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0.
[&c.]
* * *
And now you can make modifications to the file and redistribute it,
and you don't have to include a copy of the Academic Free License
anywhere. But you can never strip the copyright line or the notice
line from the file.
Now say that I used Modified BSD instead.
* * *
#!/bin/sh
# Copyright 2007, Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com
# Licensed under the Modified BSD License.
[&c.]
* * *
There are now two differences:
* Whenever you redistribute the file, you have to include a copy of
the Modified BSD License, either in the file itself or alongside it.
* You can technically strip the copyright line and the notice line
from the file and move them to a LICENSE.txt file instead. Not that
you would, but you could.
This is kinda crummy for you because you have to include a copy of the
Modified BSD license now, and it's kinda crummy for any subsequent
users and me the original author if you move the notice out because
then nobody knows who wrote it unless they look at the LICENSE.txt
file.
I think of licenses as mandating politeness and good academic
behaviour. They also let you know what the original author thinks of
as being polite :-)
So this is what I mean by preserving the notice. I hope that explains
it a bit better, but please feel free to point out anything I've
misunderstood or to ask further questions of course. Thanks for your
reply.
--
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/
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