Hello fellows from license-discuss@, I'd like to get a little bit of feedback on a licence template posted below. I don't ask for certification because I already know well (check the list archives) that you are not going to approve Just Another Boring OpenSource Licence, but if you'd like to provide me with some helpful information, please go on.
The intent of the licence is the classical "giveaway" or "copycentre" ideology of the BSD licence type - I write something for myself and just publish it; I don't want to be made liable for it, but then, I don't want others to say they've written it (so I can re-use the pieces commercially later, if I want to). In addition to that, in most European countries, there's not only the Copyright law, but this droit d'auteur thing. Also, rumours have it (seen at Heise Newsticker "Bremer Lizenz", for the Germans among the readership) that, if you disclaim everything, you end up being in "default liability by law", which is a lot more than the bare minimum; Till Jaeger from ifrOSS spoke that one cannot disclaim liability for malware (eg, viruses or trojans put into the code) or work which is others' intellectual property. (As far as I am informed, you're liable for these two if you put it in voluntarily, and - if you didn't know about it - if you remove it as soon as you get aware of it, you won't usually be held liable. Please correct me if I'm wrong; IANAL.) The licence template below tries to summarize it in two sentences ;-) I still don't exactly like the wording of the "malice intent" subphrase, nor its positioning in the paragraph. If you have a better idea (which fits into the justification of the para- graphs), please tell me. Please note I am not subscribed to this list since quite some time, so it's highly appreciated if you Cc: either myself or, better, the MirOS discussion mailing list, on replies. Thanks in advance! bye, //Thorsten Exhibit A: just another licence template /* $Id$ *- * Copyright (c) year, year, year, ... * First M. Last <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * * Licensee is hereby permitted to deal in this work without restric- * tion, including unlimited rights to use, publically perform, modi- * fy, merge, distribute, sell, give away or sublicence, provided the * above copyright notices, these terms and the disclaimer are retai- * ned in all redistributions, or reproduced in accompanying documen- * tation or other materials provided with binary redistributions. * * Licensor hereby provides this work "as is" and without any warran- * ties whatsoever, express or implied, to the maximum extent permit- * ted by applicable law, except that the work is not written or pub- * lished with malice intent; in no event may authors or contributors * be held liable for any damage, however caused, direct or indirect, * arising in any way out of the usage of covered work, even if advi- * sed of the possibility of such damage. */ PS: I wouldn't be angry if, despite I chose to not ask for it, the OSI approved this variant after the end of the discussions ;-) PPS: miros-discuss@ subscribers, you're still invited to discuss as well. -- Solange man keine schmutzigen Tricks macht, und ich meine *wirklich* schmutzige Tricks, wie bei einer doppelt verketteten Liste beide Pointer XORen und in nur einem Word speichern, funktioniert Boehm ganz hervorragend. -- Andreas Bogk über boehm-gc in d.a.s.r