super small licenses, good or bad idea?

Jon Mayo jon.mayo at gmail.com
Tue May 31 23:36:28 UTC 2011


I like to put a license that fits in a small comment in code I post on
paste sites or short little C examples I leave on my website/blog.
Sometimes I just make these examples public domain, but that seems to
have issues in places outside of the US, so I was looking for
something as small as saying "No copyright claimed, this work is in
Public Domain, yadayda". There is the fair license (
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/Fair ) , while small, it is
strangely worded. Fair License:
<Copyright Information>

Usage of the works is permitted provided that this instrument is
retained with the works, so that any entity that uses the works is
notified of this instrument.

DISCLAIMER: THE WORKS ARE WITHOUT WARRANTY.


I had my own idea for a small license based on the Fair license, I
called it the "Fair Enough" license. I realize that license
proliferation is troublesome, so I have avoided using this license
much or I try to dual license if I do toy around with using this
license, but here's the text for your review:

Copyright 2011 <Your Name>
Modification and redistribution is permitted if unmodified license is included.
The works are without warranty.

(some version I use 'or' some I use 'and', because I'm not sure which
is right. I think both mean the same thing here because I'm giving
permission for A and B, but I'm not requiring you to do anything with
that permission)

Here's my question, are these micro-licenses (which I consider
MIT-like) sufficient enough to apply to small projects (generally a
single source file). Or are they full of flaws and it will just
backfire in my face if I try to run with this?

-- 
Jon Mayo
<jon.mayo at gmail.com>



More information about the License-review mailing list