Re: One-line licence statement
(Summary of the thread for Joey's benefit: some software mentioned on debian-legal had a one-line license which was intended to be almost-public-domain, but failed to give explicit permission to copy and modify. Franck is talking to that software's author to get it relicensed in a DFSG way; I suggested the ikiwiki basewiki license.) On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 at 11:26:43 +1000, Ben Finney wrote: Franck Joncourt franck.m...@dthconnex.com writes: On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:57:58PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things: http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blob;f=debian/copyright Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty. It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all the necessary things for a permissive free software license: * allows unmodified and modified copying * allows binary distributions * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I hear) My one quibble is that the “No warranty” is open to misinterpretation. (I usually make it a complete declarative sentence: “No warranty expressed or implied.”) But not very much, so it's a minor quibble, and I wouldn't reject any software on that basis. Upstream took a look at it and is going to adpot this one. Many thanks for your help. Yes, thanks for presenting that license text; I agree that it's superior to WTFPL, and worth suggesting for these use cases. Does it have a snappy name that we can use to refer to it? Not that I know of; judging by putting this wording into Google, only Joey uses it. I called it the ikiwiki basewiki license above, but I don't think that's necessarily a good way to refer to it out of context. The rest of ikiwiki is not under this license (it's mostly GPL), and the definition of the basewiki is ikiwiki jargon. Joey, I don't suppose you have a name for this license? :-) Regards, Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100423130046.ge23...@reptile.pseudorandom.co.uk
Re: One-line licence statement
Simon McVittie wrote: Not that I know of; judging by putting this wording into Google, only Joey uses it. I called it the ikiwiki basewiki license above, but I don't think that's necessarily a good way to refer to it out of context. The rest of ikiwiki is not under this license (it's mostly GPL), and the definition of the basewiki is ikiwiki jargon. Joey, I don't suppose you have a name for this license? :-) I'm embarrassed enough at participating in license proliferation, to add another name too. :-p However, this is basically a heavily modified three-clause BSD license[1], so an ad-hoc term for it might be zero-clause BSD without paranoid warantee disclaimer. Its warantee disclaimer is indeed weak. I don't know that I would want to use this on any software that could cause trouble if it broke. The files it was attached to are mostly templates that users go in and edit, and some documentation. -- see shy jo [1] http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blobdiff;f=debian/copyright;h=9a57467517e896381323b574c9177f58617d7f97;hp=9b3639b35880a020f87a76b4f203da43b3589239;hb=56f8e6344c4c05656e83a47c1f7883ecc7d9808e;hpb=79751cdaf2f8a5c1017a11fedef7421e0fecf212 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: One-line licence statement
Hi, On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:57:58PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 at 20:34:05 +0200, Franck Joncourt wrote: As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible to the public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to write it?* A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things: http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blob;f=debian/copyright Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty. It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all the necessary things for a permissive free software license: * allows unmodified and modified copying * allows binary distributions * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I hear) Upstream took a look at it and is going to adpot this one. Many thanks for your help. -- Franck Joncourt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100422181751.ga31...@diamond.stones.lan
Re: One-line licence statement
Franck Joncourt franck.m...@dthconnex.com writes: On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:57:58PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things: http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blob;f=debian/copyright Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty. It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all the necessary things for a permissive free software license: * allows unmodified and modified copying * allows binary distributions * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I hear) My one quibble is that the “No warranty” is open to misinterpretation. (I usually make it a complete declarative sentence: “No warranty expressed or implied.”) But not very much, so it's a minor quibble, and I wouldn't reject any software on that basis. Upstream took a look at it and is going to adpot this one. Many thanks for your help. Yes, thanks for presenting that license text; I agree that it's superior to WTFPL, and worth suggesting for these use cases. Does it have a snappy name that we can use to refer to it? -- \“Telling pious lies to trusting children is a form of abuse, | `\plain and simple.” —Daniel Dennett, 2010-01-12 | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87mxwvklgs@benfinney.id.au
One-line licence statement
(Please CC me since I am not subscribed to the mailing list) Hi, Looking at the libxml-writer-perl package, I found: -- Copyright (c) 1999 by Megginson Technologies. Copyright (c) 2003 Ed Avis e...@membled.com Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Joseph Walton j...@kafsemo.org No warranty. Commercial and non-commercial use freely permitted. -- I first found this a bit light. I talked to upstream, and suggested to put it in the public domain, but as he wants to keep track of the copyright holders this was not possible. As it is intended to be as close to public domain as legally possible, he pointed me out to the following URL: From http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html: All alleged advantages of a public domain dedication can be gained without uncertainty using a regular one-line licence statement, e.g., Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work. Quoting upstream: This is exactly the form, and intent, of the original XML::Writer licence: you may Do whatever you want with this work. As I am not sure, which form of language would be the best to achieve this goal? Regards, -- Franck Joncourt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100421172852.gb3...@diamond.stones.lan
Re: One-line licence statement
Le mercredi 21 avril 2010 à 19:28 +0200, Franck Joncourt a écrit : -- Copyright (c) 1999 by Megginson Technologies. Copyright (c) 2003 Ed Avis e...@membled.com Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Joseph Walton j...@kafsemo.org No warranty. Commercial and non-commercial use freely permitted. -- This is clearly non-free, since it doesn’t allow modification and redistribution. As it is intended to be as close to public domain as legally possible, he pointed me out to the following URL: From http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html: All alleged advantages of a public domain dedication can be gained without uncertainty using a regular one-line licence statement, e.g., Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work. Quoting upstream: This is exactly the form, and intent, of the original XML::Writer licence: you may Do whatever you want with this work. No. You may not, since it only permits use. As I am not sure, which form of language would be the best to achieve this goal? The simplest way to achieve that is probably the WTFPL. Cheers, -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' “If you behave this way because you are blackmailed by someone, `-[…] I will see what I can do for you.” -- Jörg Schilling signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: One-line licence statement
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 07:52:10PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le mercredi 21 avril 2010 à 19:28 +0200, Franck Joncourt a écrit : -- Copyright (c) 1999 by Megginson Technologies. Copyright (c) 2003 Ed Avis e...@membled.com Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Joseph Walton j...@kafsemo.org No warranty. Commercial and non-commercial use freely permitted. -- This is clearly non-free, since it doesn’t allow modification and redistribution. Yes, I agree. As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible to the public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to write it?* As it is intended to be as close to public domain as legally possible, he pointed me out to the following URL: From http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html: All alleged advantages of a public domain dedication can be gained without uncertainty using a regular one-line licence statement, e.g., Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work. Quoting upstream: This is exactly the form, and intent, of the original XML::Writer licence: you may Do whatever you want with this work. No. You may not, since it only permits use. As said above, I agree with you, but how to formulate this to get something similar to: Copyright (C) 2008 Owner Name. Do whatever you want with this work. Have you seen such a licence before we could borrow that sentence from? Something which is used by other projects as a standard statement. As I am not sure, which form of language would be the best to achieve this goal? The simplest way to achieve that is probably the WTFPL. Nice one! I can check with upstream to get his mind. Regards, -- Franck Joncourt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100421183405.gc3...@diamond.stones.lan
Re: One-line licence statement
On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 at 20:34:05 +0200, Franck Joncourt wrote: As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible to the public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to write it?* A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things: http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blob;f=debian/copyright Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty. It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all the necessary things for a permissive free software license: * allows unmodified and modified copying * allows binary distributions * explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I hear) There's also a semi-standard permissive license recommended by the FSF for READMEs and similar trivial files: http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/texinfo/All_002dpermissive-Copying-License.html Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved. Regards, Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100421205758.ga17...@reptile.pseudorandom.co.uk
