Software license
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If I publish anything, I put little or no restrictions on the usage of the software. It's kind of pointless anyway to put restrictions on the software, since I have no way to enforce those restrictions. I could only rely on people's good will.
-- Coming Soon to an Illegal DVD
I usually demand only to be quoted if my code is used in any project.
[]'s Harkos --- "Money isn't our god, integrity will free our soul." Cut Throat - Sepultura
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I am currently working on a update to one of my articles[^] and was wondering about how to properly license it. I was thinking of going with the Artistic License[^] as it seems to fit with what I have in mind, that is I want the program and source to be freely available and modifiable, yet protects my ownership of the software, code and original idea. What do other's here think? What license do you use when writing and distributing free software?
You may be right
I may be crazy
-- Billy Joel --Within you lies the power for good, use it!!!
Hy there! You should know that I am a student so not allready a programmer:). But did you think of the GPL (Gnu Public licens) or somethig like that? There your code ore libary, or what else is save, but others are allowed to change it, but are not allowed to sell it! Just have a read throw via google. Sorry for my bad english, I am from Austria :) See you
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Hy there! You should know that I am a student so not allready a programmer:). But did you think of the GPL (Gnu Public licens) or somethig like that? There your code ore libary, or what else is save, but others are allowed to change it, but are not allowed to sell it! Just have a read throw via google. Sorry for my bad english, I am from Austria :) See you
Thanks for that, but the GPL is one of the first I looked at. Maybe I misread it but one of the restrictions it places on code is that the GPLed code can not be used in closed-source applications. I do not want to place that restriction on users of my code. I have decided to forgo the whole specific licensing thing and just put the usual "AS-IS" and "no warranty" disclaimers on it.
Fatbuddha 1 wrote:
Sorry for my bad english, I am from Austria
No worries, I understood you and that is the important thing. And besides, your english is way way better than my German:->
You may be right
I may be crazy
-- Billy Joel --Within you lies the power for good, use it!!!
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PJ Arends wrote:
yet protects my ownership of the software
I'm probably dense, but what exactly does "ownership" mean when the source is freely available and modifiable? Also, regarding modifiable, I recently came across some code that my client was using that comes from my public domain repository. No biggy, but they had modified it without making comments about the modifications. They left my copyright notice in, which was nice of them, but the modifications were attrocious. Which left me feeling that anyone else looking at the modified code would think that I had written that crap. NOT the impression I want to leave. I ended up actually removing my license/copyright notice, since I didn't want any association with the modifications. Which made me think that I want a license that does two things: provides a hash code that you can use to authenticate the file against the original work and two, requires that any modifications be clearly documented. What are your thoughts regarding that? Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithYou can use creative commons share alike attribution license or if you working on some utility/library, you can go with lgpl or bsd license too. All these licenses allow people to modify the code while giving credit to original creator. I personally like to release my code under GPL so that any modifications to the code have to be published again.
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I am currently working on a update to one of my articles[^] and was wondering about how to properly license it. I was thinking of going with the Artistic License[^] as it seems to fit with what I have in mind, that is I want the program and source to be freely available and modifiable, yet protects my ownership of the software, code and original idea. What do other's here think? What license do you use when writing and distributing free software?
You may be right
I may be crazy
-- Billy Joel --Within you lies the power for good, use it!!!
The best thing you can do is to start with another license (like artistic) and then start modifying it to your liking. I personally use a generic-looking license with few loopholes for users, just because I hate licenses (ex. if a new major version comes out, feel free to distribute your license key). Really, you're probably not going to find a license that does *exactly* what you want. If you can, great! Otherwise, you'll have to decide between the closest fit and creating your own. Hope it Helps!
-Tyler Menezes "If a plane is on a convayer belt moving backwards at the same speed that it moves fowards, will it take off?"
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I am currently working on a update to one of my articles[^] and was wondering about how to properly license it. I was thinking of going with the Artistic License[^] as it seems to fit with what I have in mind, that is I want the program and source to be freely available and modifiable, yet protects my ownership of the software, code and original idea. What do other's here think? What license do you use when writing and distributing free software?
You may be right
I may be crazy
-- Billy Joel --Within you lies the power for good, use it!!!
The worst is when someone puts GPL on it, that means I can't use it at work or on anything that I might one day want to use. Especially after I just read through the whole article! Even worse is GPL but 'contact me for commercial licensing' which is like: 'hey, I'm using codeproject to advertise my shareware'. LGPL has ambiguity problems. Most of the common licenses out there are just anonoying if you want to be honest and follow them to the letter. One day when i get around to adding code to codeproject it will be, if anything at all, just a comment in the source files like 'originally by me, distribute and modify freely, please leave this comment here, not liable' which is enough, legally sufficient, and understandable. Egotistical is 'just acknowledge me' which means like I am going to modify the Help/About for our 2 million line project to put X's name in there just because I used some code to help start a serialization routine?
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The worst is when someone puts GPL on it, that means I can't use it at work or on anything that I might one day want to use. Especially after I just read through the whole article! Even worse is GPL but 'contact me for commercial licensing' which is like: 'hey, I'm using codeproject to advertise my shareware'. LGPL has ambiguity problems. Most of the common licenses out there are just anonoying if you want to be honest and follow them to the letter. One day when i get around to adding code to codeproject it will be, if anything at all, just a comment in the source files like 'originally by me, distribute and modify freely, please leave this comment here, not liable' which is enough, legally sufficient, and understandable. Egotistical is 'just acknowledge me' which means like I am going to modify the Help/About for our 2 million line project to put X's name in there just because I used some code to help start a serialization routine?
How is the LGPL ambiguous? I thought you could use it for freely for commercial works - isn't that what the OP wants?
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How is the LGPL ambiguous? I thought you could use it for freely for commercial works - isn't that what the OP wants?
That was most likely the intent, but it is as if it started sanely but then some insane people gave it a jolly good rogering. If you read the LGPL there are places which can be interpreted in multiple ways (if at all) some bad, expecially if you need to modify or extend the codebase. Enough so that the company I work for prohibits LGPL code use. From a lawyers point of view it is not the intrepretations you like that matter, its the interpretations you don't like!
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I am currently working on a update to one of my articles[^] and was wondering about how to properly license it. I was thinking of going with the Artistic License[^] as it seems to fit with what I have in mind, that is I want the program and source to be freely available and modifiable, yet protects my ownership of the software, code and original idea. What do other's here think? What license do you use when writing and distributing free software?
You may be right
I may be crazy
-- Billy Joel --Within you lies the power for good, use it!!!
The creative commnos is very interesting too. Its referenced in projects like music, diffrent of software. Daniel Benavides Bogota, Colombia
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PJ Arends wrote:
yet protects my ownership of the software
I'm probably dense, but what exactly does "ownership" mean when the source is freely available and modifiable? Also, regarding modifiable, I recently came across some code that my client was using that comes from my public domain repository. No biggy, but they had modified it without making comments about the modifications. They left my copyright notice in, which was nice of them, but the modifications were attrocious. Which left me feeling that anyone else looking at the modified code would think that I had written that crap. NOT the impression I want to leave. I ended up actually removing my license/copyright notice, since I didn't want any association with the modifications. Which made me think that I want a license that does two things: provides a hash code that you can use to authenticate the file against the original work and two, requires that any modifications be clearly documented. What are your thoughts regarding that? Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithJust add a comment at the end of each line marking it as yours. Any lines without your 'tag' are obviously new :-D
string key = "blah"; // MC
string s = "aaa";Clearly 2nd line added by a noob :) (joking of course.. bit of an extreme solution)
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
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