> > We, the authors of this work, are giving it away to you, dear
> > reader (and to everyone else), as an opportunity, not as a
> > service. Do with it whatever you want. We welcome your
> > contributions, and we owe you nothing.
>
> This fails to grant the rights explicitly identified in the Berne
> convention[1] and probably doesn't have the legal effect that you
> intend.
>
> > I imagine that putting this one in place of the orthodox blurb would
> > be an inspiring demonstration of resistance to fear. Surely no
> > judge could misunderstand its intention.
>
> I think case law proves you wrong here too.
>
Exactly. It isn't "fear" it is knowledge, of how the law works and
what sort of things have stood the test of time. If in in spite of my
good intentions to allow my work to be freely copied, modified, and
redistributed, because I am not a lawyer and make up my own license I
would often end up NOT saying these things explicitly. And if you
don't explicitly state them, you haven't given people permission to
do it. When I was younger and stupider I shared your belief that the
legaleze was dumb and made me look fearful - I now know better. the legaleze
isn't to protect me - it's to protect the people who wish to use
my code in the future. When I release stuff with an ambiguous license
I only hurt them with a potential trap later on.
If you truly want to give it away, you are by far best off
with a BSD syle license which has stood the legal test of time. I have lost
count of how many times well meaning authors because they have some wild
hair up their ass that they "don't like legaleze" do something like:
"Here is my nice program, I'm a nice guy, you can use it however
you like."
with the intention of "giving it away" the problem is this statement
does *NOT* address the author's rights - specifically, it doesn't say
if someone can modify it, and it doesn't say if they can copy it and give
it to someone else. Since it doesn't, legally, you can't do that. Code
under the above license can not be included in OpenBSD for that reason.
So to reiterate - "Trust us we know what we're doing". If you want
your code to be free, modifiable by others, and redistributable by
others (even to make baby mulching machines) use a BSD style licence
as we suggest. It has stood the test of time. If you don't want your
code to be that way, use a different established license such as the
GPL with different goals. However, for god's sake don't make up your
own. Your disdain for legaleze will only hurt the ability of others to
use your code in the future the way you intended, and effectively trap
them when someone notices the ambiguities in what you wrote. if you
respect the people who may use your code, you owe it to yourself and
them to release it under something sane and understandble. (whatever
that is)
-Bob
