One-line licence statement

[Franck Joncourt]

(Please CC me since I am not subscribed to the mailing list)

Hi,

Looking at the libxml-writer-perl package, I found:

--
Copyright (c) 1999 by Megginson Technologies.
Copyright (c) 2003 Ed Avis 
Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Joseph Walton 

No warranty.  Commercial and non-commercial use freely permitted.
--

I first found this a bit light. I talked to upstream, and suggested to put
it in the public domain, but as he wants to keep track of the copyright
holders this was not possible.

As it is intended to be as close to public domain as legally possible, he
pointed me out to the following URL:

>From <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html>:

> All alleged advantages of a "public domain dedication" can be
> gained without uncertainty using a regular one-line licence statement,
> e.g., "Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work."

Quoting upstream:
"This is exactly the form, and intent, of the original XML::Writer licence:
you may "Do whatever you want with this work."

As I am not sure, which form of language would be the best to achieve this
goal?

Regards,

-- 
Franck Joncourt


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Josselin Mouette]

Le mercredi 21 avril 2010 à 19:28 +0200, Franck Joncourt a écrit : 
> --
> Copyright (c) 1999 by Megginson Technologies.
> Copyright (c) 2003 Ed Avis 
> Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Joseph Walton 
> 
> No warranty.  Commercial and non-commercial use freely permitted.
> --

This is clearly non-free, since it doesn’t allow modification and
redistribution.

> As it is intended to be as close to public domain as legally possible, he
> pointed me out to the following URL:
> 
> >From <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html>:
> 
> > All alleged advantages of a "public domain dedication" can be
> > gained without uncertainty using a regular one-line licence statement,
> > e.g., "Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work."
> 
> Quoting upstream:
> "This is exactly the form, and intent, of the original XML::Writer licence:
> you may "Do whatever you want with this work."

No. You may not, since it only permits use.

> As I am not sure, which form of language would be the best to achieve this
> goal?

The simplest way to achieve that is probably the WTFPL.

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.  Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'  “If you behave this way because you are blackmailed by someone,
  `-[…] I will see what I can do for you.”  -- Jörg Schilling


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Franck Joncourt]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 07:52:10PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le mercredi 21 avril 2010 à 19:28 +0200, Franck Joncourt a écrit : 
> > --
> > Copyright (c) 1999 by Megginson Technologies.
> > Copyright (c) 2003 Ed Avis 
> > Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Joseph Walton 
> > 
> > No warranty.  Commercial and non-commercial use freely permitted.
> > --
> 
> This is clearly non-free, since it doesn’t allow modification and
> redistribution.

Yes, I agree.
As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible to the
public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to
write it?*

> > As it is intended to be as close to public domain as legally possible, he
> > pointed me out to the following URL:
> > 
> > >From <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html>:
> > 
> > > All alleged advantages of a "public domain dedication" can be
> > > gained without uncertainty using a regular one-line licence statement,
> > > e.g., "Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this 
> > > work."
> > 
> > Quoting upstream:
> > "This is exactly the form, and intent, of the original XML::Writer licence:
> > you may "Do whatever you want with this work."
> 
> No. You may not, since it only permits use.

As said above, I agree with you, but how to formulate this to get something
similar to:

"Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work."

Have you seen such a licence before we could borrow that sentence from?
Something which is used by other projects as a standard statement.

> > As I am not sure, which form of language would be the best to achieve this
> > goal?
> 
> The simplest way to achieve that is probably the WTFPL.

Nice one! I can check with upstream to get his mind.

Regards,

-- 
Franck Joncourt


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Simon McVittie]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 at 20:34:05 +0200, Franck Joncourt wrote:
> As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible to 
> the
> public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to
> write it?*

A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts
of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things:


Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without
modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty.

It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all
the necessary things for a permissive free software license:

* allows unmodified and modified copying
* allows binary distributions
* explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I hear)

There's also a semi-standard permissive license recommended by the FSF
for READMEs and similar trivial files:


 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 notice and this notice are preserved.

Regards,
Simon


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Franck Joncourt]

Hi,

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:57:58PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 at 20:34:05 +0200, Franck Joncourt wrote:
> > As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible 
> > to the
> > public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to
> > write it?*
> 
> A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts
> of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things:
> 
> 
> Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without
> modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty.
> 
> It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all
> the necessary things for a permissive free software license:
> 
> * allows unmodified and modified copying
> * allows binary distributions
> * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I 
> hear)

Upstream took a look at it and is going to adpot this one.

Many thanks for your help.

-- 
Franck Joncourt


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Ben Finney]

Franck Joncourt  writes:

> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:57:58PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the
> > parts of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other
> > things:
> > 
> > 
> > Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without
> > modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty.
> > 
> > It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to
> > cover all the necessary things for a permissive free software
> > license:
> > 
> > * allows unmodified and modified copying
> > * allows binary distributions
> > * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some
> > jurisdictions, I hear)

My one quibble is that the “No warranty” is open to misinterpretation.
(I usually make it a complete declarative sentence: “No warranty
expressed or implied.”) But not very much, so it's a minor quibble, and
I wouldn't reject any software on that basis.

> Upstream took a look at it and is going to adpot this one.
>
> Many thanks for your help.

Yes, thanks for presenting that license text; I agree that it's superior
to WTFPL, and worth suggesting for these use cases.

Does it have a snappy name that we can use to refer to it?

-- 
 \“Telling pious lies to trusting children is a form of abuse, |
  `\plain and simple.” —Daniel Dennett, 2010-01-12 |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Simon McVittie]

(Summary of the thread for Joey's benefit: some software mentioned on
debian-legal had a one-line license which was intended to be
almost-public-domain, but failed to give explicit permission to copy and
modify. Franck is talking to that software's author to get it relicensed in
a DFSG way; I suggested the ikiwiki basewiki license.)

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 at 11:26:43 +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> Franck Joncourt  writes:
> > On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:57:58PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > > A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the
> > > parts of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other
> > > things:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without
> > > modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty.
> > > 
> > > It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to
> > > cover all the necessary things for a permissive free software
> > > license:
> > > 
> > > * allows unmodified and modified copying
> > > * allows binary distributions
> > > * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some
> > > jurisdictions, I hear)
> 
> My one quibble is that the “No warranty” is open to misinterpretation.
> (I usually make it a complete declarative sentence: “No warranty
> expressed or implied.”) But not very much, so it's a minor quibble, and
> I wouldn't reject any software on that basis.
> 
> > Upstream took a look at it and is going to adpot this one.
> >
> > Many thanks for your help.
> 
> Yes, thanks for presenting that license text; I agree that it's superior
> to WTFPL, and worth suggesting for these use cases.
> 
> Does it have a snappy name that we can use to refer to it?

Not that I know of; judging by putting this wording into Google, only Joey
uses it. I called it "the ikiwiki basewiki license" above, but I don't think
that's necessarily a good way to refer to it out of context. The rest of
ikiwiki is not under this license (it's mostly GPL), and the definition
of the basewiki is ikiwiki jargon.

Joey, I don't suppose you have a name for this license? :-)

Regards,
Simon


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Re: One-line licence statement

[Joey Hess]

Simon McVittie wrote:
> Not that I know of; judging by putting this wording into Google, only Joey
> uses it. I called it "the ikiwiki basewiki license" above, but I don't think
> that's necessarily a good way to refer to it out of context. The rest of
> ikiwiki is not under this license (it's mostly GPL), and the definition
> of the basewiki is ikiwiki jargon.
> 
> Joey, I don't suppose you have a name for this license? :-)

I'm embarrassed enough at participating in license proliferation, to add
another name too. :-p

However, this is basically a heavily modified three-clause BSD license[1],
so an ad-hoc term for it might be "zero-clause BSD without paranoid
warantee disclaimer".

Its warantee disclaimer is indeed weak. I don't know that I would
want to use this on any software that could cause trouble if it broke.
The files it was attached to are mostly templates that users go in and
edit, and some documentation.

-- 
see shy jo

[1] 
http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blobdiff;f=debian/copyright;h=9a57467517e896381323b574c9177f58617d7f97;hp=9b3639b35880a020f87a76b4f203da43b3589239;hb=56f8e6344c4c05656e83a47c1f7883ecc7d9808e;hpb=79751cdaf2f8a5c1017a11fedef7421e0fecf212


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