Alan G Isaac wrote:
I wouldn’t imagine anyone would hesitate borrowing code
from a demo because of a lack of license.
It depends on what you mean by “lack of a license”.
I think what most people (myself included) would
like to see for a demo script is "this file is in the public
domain". That is not exactly a “license”, but it roughly
means "use this however you want without worrying about
any restrictions, not even attribution requirements".
I do not think the LGPL generally makes sense (literally)
for such scripts:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
If public domain is uncomfortable,
then perhaps MIT or BSD would be comfortable.
URL:[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html](http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
Of course, s/he who has the copyright chooses the license.
Cheers,
Alan Isaac
Although we’re markedly off-topic here, I want to mention that I’ve battled
with the question of licensing my code. It’s documented here:
http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2006/04/13/choosing-an-open-source-license-for-my-code/
The choice of LGPL eventually stems from my desire to promote free software,
and prevent abuse. True, for demos it makes less sense than for full-blown
libraries, but still…
Consider this: the demo teaches someone how to make some interface/code
work. He got it for free, because I’ve placed my demo publicly online. But
he may want to incorporate it in his program, and hide from his users how he
does the thing the demo taught him, winning a competitive advantage. This
isn’t fair, and LGPL prevents such use, while in general allowing one to use
the code in commercial applications.
My understanding of what can and cannot be licensed, at least in U.S. law and (as far as I know) some other areas as well, is that what you are trying to guard is something you cannot guard unless you get a patent.
The specific text of a program, its concrete form, and perhaps other “concrete implementation” features are covered (or at least can be covered) by copyright.
Knowledge, including “how he does the thing the demo taught him,” is not subject to copyright. That is, if he legally reads your code, and clones functionality, there is no way barring a software patent that you can restrict this.
I personally regard viral licenses with caution: that is, if the copyright says, “Don’t build on or extend this unless you want your work to be covered by my chosen license,” I will be extremely cautious about building off of them. Under the LGPV, if I incorporate one of your demos into my own 2000 line program, your requirements of fairness require me to place my entire 2000 line program under the terms of the license you chose.
This is a significant deterrent to some programmers.
···
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 12:43 PM, eliben <eliben@…287…> wrote:
On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, eliben apparently wrote:
Eli
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