Re: [PLUG] software licenses

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@purple.com>]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 09:46:27PM -0400, Michael C. Toren wrote:
>   [22 lines, 163 words, 1203 characters]  Top characters: et_ioans
> 
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 10:16:47AM -0400, Jeff Abrahamson wrote:
> > I have become frustrated with the amount of code on the web that has
> > no explicit license attached to it.  Most often this appears in code
> > that people post in email messages that then become archived.
> 
> Out of curiosity, how large are the snippets of code you're referring to?

It came up today with a 30 line snippet that used C to drive gnuplot.
Now, of course, I was able to write what I wanted from scratch in a
half hour or so (including debugging), but I would have been happy to
reuse existing code instead.


> > (Of course, I'd prefer that people indicate a GPL-compatible license
> > or release to the public domain, but mostly I'd like to encourage
> > people to just be clear.)
> 
> FYI, it seems that it may not be possible for an author to place his work in
> the public domain, even if he states that the work is in the public domain.
> <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html> contains a
> good deal of information on this topic, and is a very, very interesting read,
> along with the rest of <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/>.

That's interesting.  It's certainly a good argument against trying for
the public domain.

I remember Eben Moglen (the FSF lawyer and Columbia prof) or Lawrence
Lessig (EFF lawyer and Stanford prof) saying that you probably
protected yourself better by offering a license rather than putting
software in the public domain, as the license meant the person had to
agree that you weren't liable for damages, whereas in the public
domain this was not the case.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>
 GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276  63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B

 A cool book of games, highly worth checking out:
 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931686963/purple-20

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