On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:36 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:47:11 -0700, jhunter.dunefsky wrote: > >> Actually, my current licence can be found here: >> https://github.com/jhunter-d/im.py/blob/master/LICENCE. Whaddaya think >> about this, Useneters? > > > I think you're looking for a world of pain, when somebody uses your > software, it breaks something, and they sue you. Your licence currently > means that you are responsible for the performance of your software. > > Why don't you use a recognised, tested, legally-correct licence, like the > MIT licence, instead of trying to be clever and/or lazy with a one-liner? > > E.g. http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
Plus there's the whole brevity thing. If I see something that says "MIT license", I don't need to read the details. Compare the README for one of my projects: https://github.com/Rosuav/Gypsum/blob/master/README (Actually, I need to update that; there are a few solved problems listed there as still open.) You read "Licensed under the BSD Open Source license" and then you can stop reading - you know what your rights are. The lawyers at Roy Smith's company would have no trouble comprehending this, and no trouble deciding whether or not it's allowed - they either do or do not (there is no try). License proliferation is actually a major problem. If I were to lift code from your program and incorporate it into something GPL3, am I violating either's terms? What if I want to put that code into something BSD 2-clause? Am I allowed? At least if you use a well-known license, I can do a quick web search, coming up with something like [1], but a custom or unusual license would require careful analysis of terms. [1] http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/floss-license-slide.html ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
