[repost] [j at uriah.heep.sax.de: For Approval: The beer-ware license]

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Fri Jan 11 10:37:30 UTC 2008


Quoting Joerg Wunsch (j at uriah.heep.sax.de):

> I've been originally posting this request more than three years ago,
> but never got the slightest response.
[...]
> I'm acting here on behalf of Poul-Henning Kamp...

I don't want to seem like I don't appreciate the favour you're trying to
do your friend, but did it occur to you that it might have been ignored
for lack of interest, and that there might have been a good reason for
that lack of interest?

> "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
> <AUTHOR> wrote this file.  As long as you retain this notice you
> can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
> this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return.   <AUTHOR>

Like all such simple-permissive licences, this is obviously OSD-compliant, 
as are (no doubt) thousands of potential variations on this theme.  Most 
such variations, like Kamp's, will end up lacking the obviously needed
warranty disclaimer -- in addition to being yet another one-off,
non-standard licence doomed to obscurity.

Me, I'd recommend that your friend Poul-Henning use AFL 3.0 or the MIT
License, and get over that line-count fetish of his.  If OSI ends up
being somehow obliged to certify YAPL (Yet Another Permissive Licence),
then Kamp's licence should be immediately consigned to the deprecated
bin.




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