EricBall's Tech Projects

You could check out Creative Commons licensing. There are versions of the copyleft licensing that do pretty much exactly what you're looking for. For instance this version is Attribution, non-commercial. Which basically requires them give you credit while allowing it for derivative works so long as it's non-commercial in nature. (There's a version that allows commercial use as well.)

 

I tend to see this type of license applied to things like books and music by authors releasing things independantly (As if they had a publisher odds are the publisher would never agree to let it be released with anything but full-on copyright granted to the publisher.)

 

As to how useful it would be applied to software, I'm unsure, but the licensing itself isn't tied to a specific use or field of work. Most I can say is read up on the website to see if it fits the bill for you. Keep in mind that releasing something in a non-commercial CC license doesn't forbid the original author from selling the material. It just forbids others from selling it or derivatives.

You could check out Creative Commons licensing.

Yeah, I've stuck CC-BY-SA-3.0 on my alpha code, but the GNU folks say it's incompatible with the GPL. I think there are some philosophical differences because I haven't found anything which says "CC-BY-SA" is bad because of X. (I think the issue is GNU likes to encourage source delivery and discourage "advertising" clauses like CC-BY.)

You could check out Creative Commons licensing.

Yeah, I've stuck CC-BY-SA-3.0 on my alpha code, but the GNU folks say it's incompatible with the GPL. I think there are some philosophical differences because I haven't found anything which says "CC-BY-SA" is bad because of X. (I think the issue is GNU likes to encourage source delivery and discourage "advertising" clauses like CC-BY.)

 

My grasp on the full GPL isn't that great, but that's my opinion as well. With how often a GPLed project may change hands or get forked, you can imagine how large the "credits" list could end up if everybody fixing a bug insisted on adding their name to it. That being said, it'd be funny as hell seeing a 7gig torrent for a GPL project where the installed program only takes up 100megs, with the rest of it being a "credits.txt".

 

Of course, when it comes to software, I'm half caught between applying creative commons or just sticking a very simple EULA in there that is fairly unintrusive and non-deceptive (you know, the exact opposite of 99.9999% of all EULAs)

 

The EULA I'd use would be something similar to "By accepting this EULA, you acknowledge you are using it at your own risk. If you break it, you get to keep both pieces." ... which I've actually seen in one EULA before.

I've stuck on a license based on the XFree86 License which seems fairly similar to a lot of non-copyleft free software licenses. Drop the 3rd clause, and you have the current BSD license. Drop clauses 3 & 4 and you have the FreeBSD license. Keep only the first clause and you have the X11 license (which is a common license for Prop code).

 

Yeah, I can see credits starting to accumulate. But it's not like the full GNU GPL is small either.

 

My reason for not going with copyleft is I have written a driver, not a full application. So although I'd like to encourage modifiers to make their changes freely available, I don't want to force users to release their whole application if they want to use my driver. But this doesn't mesh with GNU's philosophy. It looks like the GNU Lesser GPL (which GNU only uses begrudgingly) might provide what I want, but that's a whole chunk of legalese versus what I'm using.

I just was going to shoot you an e-mail about that, until I saw the latest license.

 

You've struck a good balance with this license! Nicely done.

 

Thinking back on other projects, the Creative Commons is kind of rough for this kind of code. I personally like it and the GPL, for a lot of things, but both of those would inhibit this project. CC would have not allowed for the character mode driver derivative / modification I am planning as that will roll up into PropDOS, which is MIT. I think now, given credit is preserved, that could happen and that's a good thing.

 

(and the folks on that project are GREAT on credit, going so far as to track me, and others down to secure it)

 

BTW: You can always license to people on a basis other than the default license stated. I've done this in the past, to permit a non-GPL derivative / modification to exist. Bummer though, is that not everybody will up and ask.

 

Good on you for thinking it through too. Licensing is such a PITA...

 

Who cares if a batch of credits pile up in a header or two? If anything, it's gonna be nice to see who did what over time. Of the options we have most often, that's a pretty easy one.

Actually, I just had a thought. The current license requires the user to duplicate my license verbatim. Maybe add a clause which allows the user to incorporate my license into theirs.

Actually, I just had a thought. The current license requires the user to duplicate my license verbatim. Maybe add a clause which allows the user to incorporate my license into theirs.

 

That's true.

 

Can you put your license somewhere they can just cite it? That's a split the middle thing that would work well.

 

eg: Magic Bubble Driver Code, Eric Ball 2009, licensed [cite URL?]

 

The problem with mixing the licenses together is then a big license.txt file appears, or it all gets mangled, or something ugly.

 

BTW: The Propeller Wiki would be a good place for this. propeller.wikispaces.com. You can just put your driver code there, document, license, etc.. and then it's both available and they've got a nice clean page to cite. I'm one of the maintainers for that. Everybody has been good so far.

 

This is what I'm going to do with my next round of stuff.

 

Some things I just don't care about, and those end up in the forum. Other things I do, and I've been struggling with this also as the MIT deal isn't quite how I like to play it.

 

And GPL saw my driver re-written, which was a major bummer for those that did it! Like to avoid that.

The problem with URL citations is it isn't future proof. (One of the reasons the GPL insists the entire GPL be included.

 

But I think I've found my happy medium:

LineRAM based sprite display for 240H composite NTSC output / Copyright © 2007-2009 Eric Ball / All rights reserved.

 

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

 

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer in the source file containing the Software.

 

2. The above copyright must be included in the same form and location as other third-party acknowledgments in the end-user documentation included with the redistribution and/or in the software itself.

 

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

I have made the first clause more specific that the license only has to appear in the source file containing the driver (i.e. NTSC240H.spin). And the second clause (which is a combination of clause 2 & 3) only requires the copyright to be included as a third-party acknowledgement.

 

I was thinking about it last night - I have written a driver, not the complete application. Thus, my license (and it's clauses) only apply to the driver. e.g. The person writing the rest of the application may want to have a disclaimer on the application, but there's no reason that my disclaimer has too be visible outside of the file containing the source code I created.

 

I have also dropped the anti-advertising clause. I think that's more critical for semi-corporate copyright holders.

Modified the second clause so it only applies to binary only distributions. So if you include the source, then there's no requirement for a third-party acknowledgement in the software/documentation. But if you make a binary only (i.e. commercial) application using my diver, you have to give me credit.

 

2. Redistributions which do not include the source code must include the above copyright in the same form and location as other third-party acknowledgments in the software itself and/or in end-user documentation included with the redistribution.

That looks good to me IMHO. Very few people would have a problem with that arrangement.