On 7/2/2012 11:40 AM, Casey Rodarmor wrote:
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Chuck Swiger<ch...@codefab.com> wrote:
Nope. The obligation to keep the copyright statement intact is typically
required by law (see 17 USC section 506(c)(d) or your local equivalent), and
the obligation to keep the license terms& disclaimer intact is a standard
component of all-- or nearly all-- licenses.
Can you explain this obligation? It seems that if I am the original
copyright holder and I specifically allow for it in the license,
alteration of the copyright notices and trivial relicensing should be
no problem.
I'll infer that by asking this question, you didn't actually read:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506
:-)
It sounds like you're looking for "public domain", which may or may not be
available depending on your local law. Since public domain isn't always
well-defined or available, using a simple permissive license is the next
best thing.
My shaky legal understanding is that since copyright is the legal
leverage with which you dictate the terms of a license, it may not be
possible to dedicate something to the public domain AND provide
provisions such as those that I mentioned before. (Patent,
indemnification, etc)
That's probably close enough for a non-lawyer.
You can't remove Apache section 4 without replacing it with similar terms
which grant folks the permission to reproduce the software, modify it, etc.
I would like to remove the sub-clauses (1,2,3 and 4, or a, b, c, and
d, depending on the version) of section 4, not all of section 4. It
seems like those sub-clauses wouldn't need replacement, since they are
purely restrictive in nature, merely qualifying the unrestricted
distribution rights given in the opening of section 4 itself.
Well, you can license your own works under any terms you please. However,
changing the license terms carelessly can make your licensed software not
miscible with other software licenses and adds to the pain of license
proliferation.
It's also not advisable for someone to alter an existing license without
consulting their own lawyer; if you don't have someone to provide a legal
review, then you're almost certainly better off using an existing license
which actually has been reviewed.
If you're a coder, hack code. Let the lawyers hack licenses. :-)
Perhaps consider the MIT or 2-clause BSD licenses if you want something
smaller which is OSI approved. Otherwise, perhaps take a look at the
Beerware license, http://unlicense.org/ license, CC0, or WTFPL.
These licenses are fine, except that they do not have, for example, a
default license for contributions, patent clause, etc.
Sure, the default license for contribution clause is something I also like
about the Apache license.
And the beerware, MIT, and BSD licenses are self-perpetuating, they require
their reproduction along with the work they cover.
Perhaps the question I should be asking is, why is this kind of
license a de-facto standard? (And by this kind of license I mean one
that requires that the license and all copyright notices be kept
intact.) Why not just let people do whatever they want with the work
in question?
Without the license, folks would not have permission to redistribute someone
else's copyrighted work.
I want to be attributed, but I find it distasteful to legally require people to
do so.
In many places, the author of a work has the legal right/obligation to be
identified as such; for example from French / European law see droit d'auteur.
Also, I know that people have a preference for many different
licenses, GPL, Apache 2.0, MIT, etc. I would like to release my work
under a license that can simply be replaced with the license of their
choice, or, in the case of a combination of work A and my work, can
simply be licensed under A's license, without being required to
perpetuate my license.
You're referring to the notion of "license miscibility".
Easy solution: choose an existing OSI-approved permissive license.
If you have reasons for not going with the easy solution, then you'll probably
find it useful to read your local copyright laws, consult the list archives
for the OSI lists, the FSF's licensing site (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/),
and, of course, talk with a lawyer.
Sorry for all naive questions, this is the first time that I've
actually been required to understand software licenses, after many
years of simply agreeing to them :)
Heh-- software licensing isn't *too* painful. YMMV, since my immediate
comparison for "painful" is leap-second handling in the Linux kernel and
JVM.... 8-) / 2
Regards,
--
-Chuck
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