"Don" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message news:hrcpir$ob...@digitalmars.com... > Nick Sabalausky wrote: >> "Don" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message >> news:hrclc9$gj...@digitalmars.com... >>> Nick Sabalausky wrote: >>>> >>>> I *hate* licenses...(That's why I use the zlib one, none of the public >>>> domain problems, all of the freedoms that I've been told Boost offers, >>>> and none of Boost's idiotic over-verbosity.) >>> Yeah, we all feel the same way. >>> But I don't think the boost license is verbose. It's 4% of the length of >>> the GPL: >>> >>> zlib: 957 characters >>> boost: 1361 (1/3 of which comes from US legal requirements). >>> Apache2: 9219 >>> Academic free license3: 10332 >>> GPL 3: 32069 >> >> Saying a license isn't verbose because it's much shorter than the GPL is >> like saying a particular restaurant is good just because it's better than >> eating out of a dumpster. > > Well, there's not many places to eat in this town, outside of the > dumpsters. Boost and zlib were the only ones I found. >
Hee hee :) >> Seriously, were they *trying* to prevent people from understanding it? >> If >> so, I don't think they could have done a better job. (At least not >> without hiring the FSF's "Let's do everything we can to enure our >> profession is needed as much as possible" lawyers.) > > Have you read the rationale statement for the Boost license? (on the boost > website). > I have, but I just read through it again to make sure I didn't miss anything. The only part of my complaint that it seems to address is the all-caps section. But even with that, all it actually says is "Capitalization of these particular provisions is a US legal mandate for consumer protection. (Diane Cabell)" and provides no source and no further details about the mandate. (BTW, Figures that the US gov would require consumer-protection text to be in a form that's well known to be difficult to read, and then try to pretend that doing so is somehow in the consumer's best interest instead of corporate best interest.) I did find this bit interesting though: "Do I have to copyright/license trivial files? Even a test file that just contains an empty main() should have a copyright. Files without copyrights make corporate lawyers nervous, and that's a barrier to adoption." Going by what's said there, I think I actually *like* that. And by that I mean, using one blanket license file for the whole source and not being explicit in every individual file. As much as I dislike about the GPL, I've actually always been somewhat conflicted about it. I hate the verbosity, viral nature, inhibits adoption, inability to make much use of GPLed stuff when I've been working in a real commercial environment, etc. But, I love that it prevents the aiding of proprietary corporate crap. If some big corporation is going to try to push some closed-off crap (like Apple's iP*'s, cell phones, just about any game console, and software that I need to be able to rely on even if the company goes down or chooses to drop support), then I *want* them to be forced to re-invent everything (which they'll inevitably do poorly) to help keep the door open for a better, less anti-consumer, competitor. So if there's something that's only flaw is that it makes corporate lawyers nervous, I'd say that sounds like a step closer to having the best of both worlds: keeping proprietary corporate crap out of the loop *without* actually being viral. > The really appalling one is the OSI license. There's a huge document which > purports to explain the license, but it doesn't explain it at all. It's > just a polemic against the GPL. The FSF is much clearer than the OSI. Good to know. I wasn't really familiar with that one. ------------------------------- Sent from my PC while pretending that people care what it's sent from.
