Near Public Domain license

Thu Jul 26 16:00:09 UTC 2007

David Shofi wrote: 

I find it quite unbelievable that a clear and unequivocal statement that an
original copyrighted work is dedicated to the public would not serve to
provide the necessary rights to anyone choosing to use the work in an OSS
project, regardless of the OSS license used by that project.  

Once again the public domain rears its undisciplined head! :-) Dedicate your
works to the public domain if you insist, but it is so easy to say:
"Licensed to the public under the BSD license."

Jean-Marc Lienher said that he didn't want "acknowledgement over which he
has no control." Do you think he can control or prevent acknowledgement
through a public domain dedication? Most recipients of software will follow
their own ethical duty not to plagiarize and will acknowledge even the
public domain works they copy. (I attribute certain statements to
Shakespeare even though his works are in the public domain.) Modern open
source licenses protect authors' reputations through attribution provisions
that say directly what licensees must or must not do; public domain
dedications leave all that out. Most software authors appreciate provisions
like "Don't use my name or trademark to promote your versions of this
software." It is the rare author who wants to leave that to chance.

Mr. Lienher also said he doesn't like provisions that require that a copy of
the license be included with the code. And yet anyone who copies works
dedicated to the public domain would be wise to include at least the
copyright notice and the public domain notice with those copies to help
prove the pedigree of the code. So what is anyone actually saving here?

If an author thinks even the BSD license is too strict, try saying this:

    Copyright 20xx author-name.

    Licensed to the public under the BSD license.

    Copyright owner hereby waives the right to enforce the conditions of the
BSD license.

At least that way the BSD's important warranty disclaimers would continue to
apply, and the author would have all the other legal benefits of using a
license rather than some public domain dedication for which the copyright
law has made no provision.

/Larry

P.S. Please don't take this as a recommendation to use the BSD license.
There are much better and more comprehensive academic-style licenses on
OSI's list. This technique of expressly waiving enforcement of license
conditions can be used with those licenses too. And it doesn't require OSI's
approval of a new license to do so.

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)

3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243

Skype: LawrenceRosen

Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and 

                Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)

  _____  

From: DShofi at atmi.com [mailto:DShofi at atmi.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 8:02 AM
To: Jean-Marc Lienher
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: Near Public Domain license

I find it quite unbelievable that a clear and unequivocal statement that an
original copyrighted work is dedicated to the public would not serve to
provide the necessary rights to anyone choosing to use the work in an OSS
project, regardless of the OSS license used by that project.  That being
said, like all software, a recipient of the work would want to do some due
diligence to understand that the author actually wrote the work from scratch
without reliance on another work that may itself be copyrighted by another.
In other words, I would think that the public domain is an acceptable manner
of putting your work out there for others to copy, modify and distribute.
You may want to include a statement about the pedigree of the code to allay
concerns as described above. 

Of course, you should engage with your own attorney if you want to be sure
of your rights...  :) 

Good luck! 

David M. Shofi

"Jean-Marc Lienher" <jml at whoow.org> 

07/26/2007 09:13 AM 

To

<license-discuss at opensource.org> 

cc

Subject

Near Public Domain license

Hi,

Sorry if this is a FAQ, but I've not found any searchable archive of this
list.

I need a very permissive license, Public Domain is a option but I've found
that it is OSI incompatible. 
( http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html )

Is there any such license already available ?

Zlib is nice. But the 
   "If you use this software
    in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
    appreciated but is not required."
sentence is too much. 
I don't want any acknowledgement on which I don't have any control.
And the Zlib disclaimer looks very short compared to the MIT/BSD.

I don't like the BSD because you must put a copy of the license in the
documentation or in a README.txt file.
I don't like the MIT because the license must be included in the binaries.

I've just seen a message talking about a simplified BSD license, but I can't
find it on the archive. (there is nothing after march 2007 
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?ddp:0:0#b )
Does this simplified BSD license fits to my needs ?

I wrote my own license, which is a mix between MIT/BSD/ISC licenses with
zero condition.
Here it is :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
            Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> 

 Permission to use, copy, modify, sublicense, and/or distribute this
 work for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.

 THE WORK IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
 MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. 
 IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT,
 INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING
 FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
 NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
 WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS WORK.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

But it looks like the approval process will cost me a lot of money.
I need to find a English speaking lawyer in my country to create the legal
analysis...

So if there is an other license, which is currently in the approval process,
and which is compatible with my needs, I will use it.

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