On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 01:38:09AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> >On 10 Mar 2007, at 19:00, Albert Ng wrote:
> >>Um, how close is the BSD license to this "my code, don't need to 
> >>quote me,
> >>do whatever you want with it, but it's consequences are all yours" 
> >>license?
> >
> >Well there's always the "public domain", i.e. no license and 
> >absolutely no need for attribution. Of course that does require the 
> >author to give up their right to place arbitrary restrictions on the 
> >dissemination of their work...
> >
> Public domain is close to what I want ... however, I think the open 
> source gang has some problems with "public domain". And I want something 
> that says if someone figures out a way to destroy a city with my code 
> that I'm not the one who gets tried for war crimes. :)

That disclaimer is something you can just attach to the code.  If
someone later strips the disclaimer and passes it on, THAT person is the
only one liable for the uses of the code (if there's any liability to be
had), generally speaking.  Disclaimers are not particular to licenses,
and can be treated as separate entities (in at least most jurisdictions;
keep in mind that I'm speaking from a USian perspective).

The major reason open source advocates dislike public domain is that
openness of the source is not enforceable in later iterations.  For
instance, a book in the public domain can, with a few modifications such
as adding a nifty red cover and a preface, become a copyrighted work,
copyrighted by the guy that wrote the preface and added the cover rather
than by the guy who wrote the book itself.

Another, less common complaint (at least, less common in the US) is that
in some jurisdictions there's no such thing as "public domain".  France,
for instance, suffers some shortcomings in this regard: you can't
completely free your code (or whatever) from any legal encumbrances at
all whatsoever except by asserting copyright and licensing it with a
statement like "No rights reserved."

My personal preference for licensing is effectively a public domain
duplicating license, plus strong inheritance so that all derivative
works must be similarly licensed.  I also tend to prefer strong
protections against plagiarism.  That's why I created the CCD CopyWrite
license that I use for basically everything I do where I'm not required
by contract (or other circumstances) to license things otherwise.  I'd
just release everything I wrote into the public domain if I wasn't
concerned about people creating derivative works and taking them OUT of
the public domain.

I'm *not* a fan of *forced* distribution models of open source
licensing, by the way -- in case you were curious.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"A script is what you give the actors.  A program
is what you give the audience." - Larry Wall