On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 1:33 PM Bret Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I'll try to search for an appropriate license and e-mail it to
> you. I've been searching though a little bit of licensing info and
> really didn't know that even declaring that something is "public domain"
> doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. I suspect it may
> ultimately have something to do with the lawyers needing SOMEBODY to
> go after when something goes wrong -- declaring it to be public domain
> doesn't necessarily get you completely "off the hook". I know Jim
> has a significant concern over these kinds of things since he is the
> "face" of FreeDOS.
>[..]
Yes, "public domain" is a tricky thing. I'm not sure when that
changed, but it used to be that you could write a simple statement
saying "I don't care about this, and I release it into the public
domain" and that was fine. Even the FSF folks used to recommend this
for trivial code, in the early 1990s.
The Creative Commons have identified a "CC-0" ("Creative Commons
Zero") that indicates "no rights reserved" that does the same thing.
https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/
A few open source licenses are popular these days. In no particular order:
MIT - a short license that is pretty broad. I usually release my
"demo" code under this license.
https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
BSD - comes in a few "flavors," the most common seems to be the
3-clause license:
https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
GNU GPL - a long license, essentially guaranteeing that the source
code can never be made "closed source" or "proprietary." The GNU GPL
v3 is the latest version, and includes new clauses intended to prevent
what the FSF folks call "Tivo-ization." I prefer the GNU GPL v2, which
I find easier to read: (be careful with the "How to Apply These Terms
to Your New Programs" section, as the suggested text says "either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" which
means someone can choose to re-release your GNU GPL v2 project under
the GNU GPL v3. That's fine for some, but I prefer to keep GNU GPL v2
only, so now I say "GNU GPL v2 only" in any code I release under the
GNU GPL v2.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
Apache 2.0 - another long license
https://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0
_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
