On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 at 14:40:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
You're really splitting hairs at this point. If you _allow_
almost anything, as most permissive licenses like the BSD or
MIT license do, nobody is going to then ask permission of the
community for every possible thing they might do, to see who
"wants" it, particularly since the community hasn't stated
anything publicly. Since the community likely has a variety of
opinions, as you yourself just admitted, such a poll of "wants"
would likely be meaningless anyway.
Unless the particular community puts out a public statement of
"wants" that most of them can get behind, which very few of
them do, it is silly to talk about what they might "want" which
isn't in the license. The license is essentially all that
matters.
The difference between what people allow and what people want is
much more significant than just "splitting hairs". However, I
agree that there is often no coherent set of "wants" in a
community, which makes it hard to consider them meaningfully.
However, I do believe there's a level of common courtesy that
should be honoured when using other people's work in a
significant project, including at the very least making them
aware that you will be doing so (anonymously, if secrecy is
important). I know many people will just take whatever they can
get and give as little as they can, but that doesn't make it
right.
I suspect we will never see eye to eye on this. You are convinced
that the letter of the licence is all that matters, I am not.
