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Message-Id: <20160316150105.24308e914032d545429048ab@frign.de> Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 15:01:05 +0100 From: FRIGN <dev@...gn.de> To: musl@...ts.openwall.com Subject: Re: musl licensing On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:34:14 +0100 Szabolcs Nagy <nsz@...t70.net> wrote: Hey Szabolcs, > it trains programmers to ignore source comments because they contain > redundant legal gibberish instead of technically relevant content. hold your horses there for a second. It is pretty much consent that the current licensing of musl can be described as erratic at best, with many different licenses conflicting in the codebase in a small degree. You for instance have done the following exception :: The BSD PRNG implementation (src/prng/random.c) and XSI search API :: (src/search/*.c) functions are Copyright © 2011 Szabolcs Nagy and :: licensed under following terms: "Permission to use, copy, modify, :: and/or distribute this code for any purpose with or without fee is :: hereby granted. There is no warranty." (taken from COPYRIGHT) This is basically the poor-man's version of BSD-0, so why not just declare it as such and be on the safe side? I'm not sure if "there is no warranty" really protects you from warranty claims. Also, all code sections which fall under the public domain because they are not copyrightable: I would not go this direction and instead just publish those sections as BSD-0. My stance is: Public domain is worse than a proper non-copyleft license in many countries, and BSD-0 goes as far as possible. I could literally take a BSD-0 code, remove all the licensing and do whatever the fuck I want with it. This is public domain for me, and in BSD-0 the author explicitly states that he doesn't give a damn about attribution. > i kept the copyright notices of src/math/* files because there are > too many variations to describe them all in a separate file, but i > have to note that they do not represent the real authors and year of > authorship.. which is the usual case for copyright notices.. > (some try to clarify the situation by assigning all the copyright > to one entity, but that makes it worse: that's clearly not about the > rights of an author, but pure coercive monopoly over ideas.) :: Much of the math library code (src/math/* and src/complex/*) is :: Copyright (...) :: and labelled as such in comments in the individual source files. All :: have been licensed under extremely permissive terms. Now, when I take a look at src/math/lrintf.c for instance, there is no copyright notice. And "extremely permissive terms" is vague at best. > why? Because there is a difference between machine generated code and hand-written code, but both can be considered a grey-zone. I also don't feel comfortable if an argument is given against a more consistent licensing practice by looking at a project which obviously has licensing issues as well. > > Also, there's no reason not to just use ISC or BSD-0. > there are things that should not be the intellectual property > of any person and you should not claim ownership of those things. If you publish source code under the BSD-0, anybody can take it, remove the license and republish it under his name. Anybody can sell it for any amount thinkable, modify it, release it, release modifications and burn copies of it on a big pile without ever having to worry that you would leverage your intellectual property. Even if you wanted, you could not do anything about it, that's the beauty. In my opinion, the BSD-0 _is_ a public domain license, as it literally sets no limits on the usage of the program, except making you not liable for any damages (which is common sense man). And other than a public domain license, the judicial context is clear in any country, and even the companies are happy when the terms are clear. --- I think everyone here should be concerned that the COPYRIGHT-file of musl is approaching the length of the GPLv2, and if in the future more things are added to musl, It's not unlikely that contributors will chime in and add special clauses to this file as well. The goal of a non-copyleft-licensed project is foremost to allow scavenging the code if you find something that is useful without having to go through great lengths of finding out what you are allowed to do and what not. Currently, this ease of use is not directly given with musl, while at least for a GPL-licensed project the restrictions are mostly laid out clearly due to its cancerous nature of self-proclamation. Cheers FRIGN -- FRIGN <dev@...gn.de>
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