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The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

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Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#21

Post by maeln »

Bostonian wrote: post #11
contravariant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably allowing your work to be used by anyone except Google is a feature not a bug.

You publish open source code so that others can benefit from it, and if Google uses it maybe billions of people will benefit from it, so I disagree.

Everyone has different reason to publish their code using open-source license. I like sharing my code but I don't like when multi-billion dollar company make a profit from it for example. Ofc, that's what I agreed to when I release my code under open-source license, but we are all free to have different sentiment about it.

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#22

Post by samatman »

A bit off topic, but commenting on footnotes is fair play: I don't believe that 'let' is in fact autoantonymic.

A let is more-or-less lost, as a noun in English, but in the form inlet and outlet it remains ubiquitous. In "let or hindrance" we might observe that a right of travel (a let) might well be a hindrance to other uses of the property.

A let in tennis is so-called because you 'let' the server try again. The sense is clearly one of permission to the player, not hindrance by the net.

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#24

Post by abetusk »

tokai wrote: post #10

Why do people want public domain software licenses? Just use a proper licence and die at some point. End result is the same without the uncertainty.

Meaning re-invent the CC0 license and apply it to your work? I don't understand what you're advocating for.

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#25

Post by captainmuon »

I'm not contributing to open source projects privately right now. But if I was publishing code on my own, I would probably make it actually unlicensed at first to keep my options open as much as possible. I would just put it somewhere and say: "here is code, you are technically able to look at it, but I am not giving you any permission". If somebody wants to use it and needs to follow copyright (for example in a commercial context) then I can grant them a free or paid license.

I like the aspect that people who don't care about copyright have an advantage, and people who have internalized it cannot even use the code privately or look at it. I think it tells that I am not a big fan of the idea of intellectual property...

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#26

Post by [deleted] »

hannob wrote: post #19

I wish people would get together to agree upon a public domain alike software license that everyone finds acceptable. That'd mean: * OSI approves it * FSF approves it * Google and other companies with large stakes in FOSS find it acceptable * Github + Gitlab support it in their templates Can we have that?

[deleted]

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#27

Post by netr0ute »

hannob wrote: post #19

I wish people would get together to agree upon a public domain alike software license that everyone finds acceptable. That'd mean: * OSI approves it * FSF approves it * Google and other companies with large stakes in FOSS find it acceptable * Github + Gitlab support it in their templates Can we have that?

What about LGPL? It seems to tick all of the 4 boxes you have.

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#28

Post by Filligree »

captainmuon wrote: post #25

I'm not contributing to open source projects privately right now. But if I was publishing code on my own, I would probably make it actually unlicensed at first to keep my options open as much as possible. I would just put it somewhere and say: "here is code, you are technically able to look at it, but I am not giving you any permission". If somebody wants to use it and needs to follow copyright (for example in a comm…

> I like the aspect that people who don't care about copyright have an advantage, and people who have internalized it cannot even use the code privately or look at it. I think it tells that I am not a big fan of the idea of intellectual property...

I can’t stop you doing that. I’m not sure I even want to. I hate copyright, and while I’m not sure it should be completely destroyed, certainly it should be weakened by — say — ninety percent.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m willing to break it. What I’ve internalised, having seen the alternative, isn’t copyright — it’s the rule of law. I’m not willing to break that just because it’s personally inconvenient.

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#29

Post by zokier »

netr0ute wrote: post #27
hannob wrote: post #19

I wish people would get together to agree upon a public domain alike software license that everyone finds acceptable. That'd mean: * OSI approves it * FSF approves it * Google and other companies with large stakes in FOSS find it acceptable * Github + Gitlab support it in their templates Can we have that?

What about LGPL? It seems to tick all of the 4 boxes you have.

LGPL is not public domain alike

Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name

#30

Post by mojzu »

tokai wrote: post #10

Why do people want public domain software licenses? Just use a proper licence and die at some point. End result is the same without the uncertainty.

Personally it's a mix of principle and practicality. On principle I'd like to be able to put code up on Github, tell people they can use it however they like and to credit me if it suits them, but otherwise I don't want the copyright or any other associated responsibilities on it. And practically I have no ability to enforce the terms of any licence once the code is in public anyway, so why should I spend time engaging in the licencing theatre
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