For thoughts: fair license

Kevin Bedell kbedell at blackducksoftware.com
Fri May 6 15:01:21 UTC 2005


> 
>         The exercise and enjoyment of the rights granted by authorship
>         is authorized provided that this instrument is retained with
>         substantial portions of the works in a good faith effort to
>         notify any entity that uses the works of this instrument.
> 

"The exercise and enjoyment of the rights granted by authorship is
authorized"

If I am the author of a work, does that not imply that I can tell others
that they cannot use it for some purpose?

Or, more directly, would it be possible under this license for some party to
protest another party's use of the code? 

I could envision a situation where one party may gain by protesting
another's usage of code under this license -- even if it's clear that both
parties have "authorship" rights.

Maybe this seems far-fatched. But what if a company had a competitor that
was distributing a product that used code under this license? Could that
company cause problems (or at least legal headaches and cost) for the
competitor by claiming "authorship" rights to the code in their product?

Could it lead to problems if literally everyone can claim to be the "author"
of a piece of code?

-kevin





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