On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 05:55:16PM +0200, Pieter Verberne wrote:
| > As an example, I like to give away my code for people to study and play
| > with. The only thing I "demand" is credit for that piece of code. The
| > reason I do not abandon that right is because at some point in my life I
| > might need to use my open source work as a resume or as a reference.
| Keeping authorship for a resume sounds like a somewhat good reason
| to me. I think you could also use public domain code for a resume,
| but that may have it's downsides. My question is something like: is
| keeping copyright worth putting the annoying license in every file?
This "annoying license" is what got you your Operating System in the
first place. McKusick has an interesting story to tell about the
history of BSD licensing. The guys at Berkeley did two amazing jobs.
They wrote BSD and they got the Regents of the UoC (and their lawyers)
to sign off on the BSD license (and, some years later, the modified
BSD license). It is because of this license that you get to run
OpenBSD (and, generally, just about every other OS out there).
Another important point is that your question is wrong. "Keeping
copyright" does not require a license. By creating a work, you (the
creator, which may be your employer) are its copyright holder. This
means that you get all the rights associated with your work. Now the
BSD (and ISC) license basically give most of these rights to the user.
You are allowed to use, copy and modify the work simply because the
license is there, in every file, stating that you are allowed to use,
copy and modify.
Calling it an "annoying license" is somewhat disrespectful. If you
find the license annoying, don't use the work. I do this quite often,
in fact, not use some piece of software because I don't like the
license.
| > All files require a copyright and license notice.
| True, but is the name of the license, or the name + URL enough? Than you
| could replace the whole ISC license with just the line like:
| # This file is ISC-licensed.
And who wrote "This file" ? You seem to have forgotten the copyright
notice. The part where it says (c) 2008, <whomever>.
| This would make one reason for using public domain less; It won't safe
| lines in textfiles.
What is so annoying about a few lines of text in a source file ?
Yeah, just "being Dutch" and all... ;)
Cheers,
Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd
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