From 80744251282f86faa0e0812fe796a34af5799d8c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Sean Barrett Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 01:56:56 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] standalone public-domain rationale document --- docs/why_public_domain.md | 49 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 49 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/why_public_domain.md diff --git a/docs/why_public_domain.md b/docs/why_public_domain.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..141e4b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/why_public_domain.md @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +My collected rationales for placing these libraries +in the public domain: + +1. Public domain vs. viral licenses + +Why is this library public domain? +Because more people will use it. Because it's not viral, people are +not obligated to give back, so you could argue that it hurts the +development of it, and then because it doesn't develop as well it's +not as good, and then because it's not as good, in the long run +maybe fewer people will use it. I have total respect for that +opinion, but I just don't believe it myself for most software. + +2. Public domain vs. attribution-required licenses + +The primary difference between public domain and, say, a Creative Commons +commercial / non-share-alike / attribution license is solely the +requirement for attribution. (Similarly the BSD license and such.) +While I would *appreciate* acknowledgement and attribution, I believe +that it is foolish to place a legal encumberment (i.e. a license) on +the software *solely* to get attribution. + +In other words, I'm arguing that PD is superior to the BSD license and +the Creative Commons 'Attribution' license. If the license offers +anything besides attribution -- as does, e.g., CC NonCommercial-ShareAlike, +or the GPL -- that's a separate discussion. + +3. Other aspects of BSD-style licenses besides attribution + +Permissive licenses like zlib and BSD license are perfectly reasonable +in their requirements, but they are very wordy and +have only two benefits over public domain: legally-mandated +attribution and liability-control. I do not believe these +are worth the excessive verbosity and user-unfriendliness +these licenses induce, especially in the single-file +case where those licenses tend to be at the top of +the file, the first thing you see. + +To the specific points, I have had no trouble receiving +attribution for my libraries; liability in the face of +no explicit disclaimer of liability is an open question, +but one I have a lot of difficulty imagining there being +any actual doubt about in court. Sometimes I explicitly +note in my libraries that I make no guarantees about them +being fit for purpose, but it's pretty absurd to do this; +as a whole, it comes across as "here is a library to decode +vorbis audio files, but it may not actually work and if +you have problems it's not my fault, but also please +report bugs so I can fix them". \ No newline at end of file