metanohi/site/misc/licensing.org

#+title: Licensing on metanohi
#&summary
What's up with all that stuff?
#&
#+startup: showall
#+license: wtfpl

* Licensing on metanohi

I usually just use the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License, Version 2
from [[http://wtfpl.net/]]:

#+BEGIN_SRC
        DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
                    Version 2, December 2004 

 Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <sam@hocevar.net> 

 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified 
 copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long 
 as the name is changed. 

            DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
   TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 

  0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.
#+END_SRC

I think the license is fun, and there really is no good reason to use anything
else for most of my small, one-off projects.  For larger projects, I use BSD2 or
BSD3 or whatever -- I accept all free software licenses and really do not wish
to discuss them that much (although I admit that I have previously been more
opionated).


* Some reasons

I got tired of software and culture licenses.  I don't mind them, and I don't
have anything against copyleft -- it's a tool, and it can be effective in some
cases -- but for my own projects, I just want to publish something that people
can use.

I still ask for attribution, but I do it in a nice way, and not with the
implicit threat of a license.  If someone doesn't attribute me, it makes no
difference to me whether they have to because of a license; I'm not going to do
anything about it anyway.

I guess that some people consider e.g. CC BY-SA a recognizable symbol and that
its law stuff is secondary.  I can follow that thought, but I just got tired of
it.

Some people might not want to integrate WTFPL code into their project, but fuck
them (okay, in practice I'll probably just relicense to BSD2 or BSD3 if
necessary).

All that being said, I will work in any free software and free culture project
no matter what license they use.  WTFPL is just for my own junk.


* Copyright in general

I'm not a fan of copyright as it is right now, but I don't know if it should be
removed alltogether (if that was even possible...).  I think it would be nice if
copyright was only for commercial use.


* Previously

I used to have a lot of text about this, but I've come to just not care.  It's
all in the git history if you want to dig it up and read it.