[License-discuss] Shortest copyleft licence

[Tim Makarios]

On Tue, 2015-03-31 at 09:17 -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Tim Makarios <tjm1983 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It doesn't require making the source code available, but
> > recipients of binaries will always be free to make derivative works by
> > reverse engineering the binaries.
> 
> That seems like a non-starter to me. It violates both the OSD and the
> FSD.

Really?  Then do the BSD and ISC licences also violate the OSD and FSD,
because they don't require the source code of derivative works to be
made available?

> Even though it has the can't-be-proprietized aspect of copyleft,
> the lack of source code would make it non-copyleft.

So is CC-BY-SA also non-copyleft?

Looking again at my suggestion, I wonder why I put the first seven words
in.  And Rick Moen's comment has made me aware of how the law sometimes
assumes people have promised things that they never mentioned, so I've
come up with another draft, with a somewhat modified version of the ISC
disclaimer.  At the risk of having it derided as a "crayon licence",
here it is:

Anyone who obtains a copy of this work is licensed to:
  * make further copies and derivative works from their copy of the work
    and
  * use and distribute their copies and derivative works,
provided that all such derivative works are governed by this licence.

UNLESS THEY HAVE EXPRESSLY PROVIDED A SEPARATE WARRANTY, THE
DISTRIBUTORS AND CREATORS OF AND CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS WORK PROVIDE NO
WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR
NON-INFRINGEMENT OF ANYONE'S RIGHTS OTHER THAN THEIR OWN; NOR WILL THEY
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 OR NEGLIGENCE OR IN ANY OTHER TORTIOUS
ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF
THIS WORK, EVEN IF THEY HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES.

My goal wasn't solely brevity, though I do see that as a feature of
licences, rather than a bug.  I also wanted to avoid extraneous
requirements, so that I can promise not to sue anyone for what they do
with copies of my work, with the *sole* proviso that they promise not to
sue other people who use their derivative works.  I don't want to be
making an implicit threat to sue people who don't give me attribution in
just the right way, or don't attach the licence in just the right way,
or don't ensure that the source code is available in perpetuity (or
encumbers every download of binary versions of the software, as Maxthon
Chan's suggested modification to the BSD licences sounds like it would
do); I just want to be able to defend against other people who might try
to sue me for such omissions.

Also, I owe a correction to this list.  I'm not sure where I got the
idea that the Open Publication Licence was copyleft, but on further
investigation, it looks like its predecessor, the Open Content License
[1], was copyleft, and perhaps very slightly shorter.

Tim
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[1] http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/oclicense.html