On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 10:44:07AM +0200, Otto Moerbeek wrote: > On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 10:14:06AM +0200, Pieter Verberne wrote: > > I'm wondering what OpenBSD people think about BSD (-like) licenses > > versus public domain. > > > > Pulic domain also says "do with it whatever you like". I really don't > > know about the importance of the disclaimer. Maybe it depends on > > the country you live in. I'm a minimalist is some respects, and I think > > you should not put anything in a license file that is not necessary: > > [quote] > > ...we favor licenses that are both clear and concise and, most > > importantly, that don't require a lawyer to interpret. > > --todd ( http://9fans.net/archive/2003/06/282 ) > > [/quote] > > > > If you put anything in public domain, you'll give up your copyright. So > > the next person te distribute your software is allowed to remove your > > name from the credits list. I can imagine this sounds like a problem for > > some man. But hey, who wrote Qmail? No-one will forget. > > If you look at the tree, you'll see that some newly created files are > public domain. That's good!
> But in general, we choose to remain known as author. > That is our privilege for the files we created or modified > extensively. Whatever you choose to do with things you publish is your > decision. Uhm.. "to remain known as author": sounds vague to me. (maybe because of my english) . However, when you put anything in public domain, you will stay recognized as the (orginal) author. (in most cases). Look at qmail, or public domain Korn shell. There only may by a chance that some autors names are 'lost' sometimes (in redistributions) because of the lack of obligation to mention the authors. > And you completely forget that a lot of the work done in the tree is > small changes to existing, BSD licensed files originally authored by > people not working in the tree anymore. We cannot change the license > of these files for obvious reasons. Well, I not really forget. I was just talking about new written code. > > BTW, how many times is the BSD license in the source repository? I think > > it is a filthiness of "$ head [sourcefile]". > > IIRC copyright law requires the license to be put in every source > file. Uhm, dunno what IIRC is.. But wouldn't it be just great to put anything like this in a file's header? : # This file is in public domain or even better: # public domain So IIRC requires the full license? That's a shame, it would be nicer to use the license's name only.
