Which License Should I Use?

[Aahz]

Please do. "USENET schmuck" is a sufficient attribution if you like,
though "Robert Kern" will work, too.

Great!

 

[Paul Rubin]

Is that why the CC Public Domain Dedication has the subtitle
"Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law) or Public Domain
Certification"?

Lessig isn't sure. E.g. http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001066.shtml

Hmm, interesting, thanks.

He's a lawyer. Getting a legal opinion from him costs money.

A legal opinion means something specific. I didn't ask him for one.

 

[Paul Rubin]

Hmm, interesting, thanks.

Bah, the CC link from there leads to a Zope crash (at least right now):

http://creativecommons.org/license/publicdomain-direct

KeyError
Sorry, a site error occurred.

Traceback (innermost last):

* Module ZPublisher.Publish, line 175, in publish_module_standard
* Module Products.PlacelessTranslationService.PatchStringIO, line 51, in new_publish
* Module ZPublisher.Publish, line 132, in publish
* Module Zope.App.startup, line 204, in zpublisher_exception_hook
...

 

[Mike Meyer]

If there's a contract -- i.e., a written agreement, then why does it matter?

The default applies if the contract doesn't say who owns the
work. This was a move by the recording companies so they could get
ownership of works simply by not saying who owned it.

<mike

 

[Robert Kern]

Bah, the CC link from there leads to a Zope crash (at least right now):

http://creativecommons.org/license/publicdomain-direct

This is the current URL:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

--
Robert Kern
(e-mail address removed)

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter

 

[Paul Rubin]

This is the current URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Thanks, yeah, I remember seeing that, which is what made me say that
CC recognized PD dedications (at least in the US--it's unreasonable to
expect to account for every weird law some country on earth might come
up with). So now I'm perplexed about Lessig's blog post. I'll see if
I can ask him about it sometime. I just emailed him the cr.yp.to url
that I linked earlier.

 

[Paul Rubin]

Then probably the best licence to use is just to follow the lead of
Python. For that sort of small program of limited value, I put something
like this in the code:

Copyright (c) 2005 Steven D'Aprano.
Released under the same license as used by Python 2.3.2 itself.

I've done that too, but some other post mentions that the Python
license is written specifically for Python and can't be used as a
"subroutine". The original GNU Emacs license (forerunner of the GPL)
was the same way: it said stuff like "you may distribute copies of
Emacs if..." instead of "you may distribute copies of this program
if...". The GPL was the result of abstracting the Emacs license so it
could be applied to other programs, but doing the abstraction took
considerable thought. It wasn't just a matter of patching up stuff
like the above.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I suggest that your
*only* defence will be to get your employer to sign a legal agreement
acknowledging that you own the code. If you like, offer them a perpetual
royalty-free non-exclusive licence to use the code, and explain how using
your own code will make you more productive in their time.

They may want to use it in a closed source product (GPL-incompatible)
which means in the case of GPL code, they want an exception to the
GPL. In the case of GPL code written by me, I'm generally unwilling
to grant such exceptions, since part of my purpose of using the GPL is
to attract other contributors. The company then has to decide,
either: a) accept the GPL; b) don't use the code, and do something
else instead, which may end up costing more.

If they refuse, then you must absolutely keep a cast-iron barrier between
what you develop in your own time and what you develop in theirs.

In some jurisdictions even such a cast-iron barrier might not be enough.

Unless you explicitly sign them away (and even that is legally dubious)
you still retain the "moral rights" to the code,

The US doesn't recognize "moral rights".

Please note that merely putting the code under a GPL or other OSS licence
is NOT sufficient -- they must agree to let you DISTRIBUTE the code.

If it's under the GPL, they're not allowed to prevent you from
distributing it, if you have a copy.

It need not be a complicated agreement:

Certainly, the best policy is to discuss things beforehand and write
out an agreement, instead of relying on faulty memory, or springing
surprises.

 

[Paul Rubin]

The default applies if the contract doesn't say who owns the
work. This was a move by the recording companies so they could get
ownership of works simply by not saying who owned it.

The trick was even worse than that. The way I've seen it explained,
work for hire is supposed to apply only to certain kinds of works done
under an employer's specific direction. For example, a company might
employ someone to write data sheets for transistors. They are told
what to write about, when to write, what template the data sheets
should follow, etc. That can be a work for hire. The copyright
belongs entirely to the company and the author retains zero interest.
But something like an all-original novel cannot be a work for hire
even if the publisher employed someone to write it and paid him a
salary for doing so. The author can sign over certain of the rights,
but retains certain other rights regardless of what any contract he's
signed might say. In particular the author can reclaim the copyright
after 35 years. This was an escape hatch made as copyrights got
longer and longer (they originally maxed out after 28 years).

An original music album, like a novel, couldn't be a work for hire
until they snuck in that change, as described in the Courtney Love
article. That meant record companies could keep the records forever.
But I heard that the change has since been reversed.

 

[Paul Boddie]

That is the guy who claims it is impossible to release anything into
the public domain, other than by dying and then waiting 70 years.

Is that an indirect reference to the following article?

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225

Paul

 

[Robert Kern]

Is that an indirect reference to the following article?

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225

Among other places where Rosen has said it, like his book.

--
Robert Kern
(e-mail address removed)

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

If it's under the GPL, they're not allowed to prevent you from
distributing it, if you have a copy.

Only if the copy is licenced to you by the copyright owner under the GPL
in the first place. You can't just take source code you have no rights to,
or some other set of rights, stick the GPL on it without the copyright
owner's permission, and then legally distribute it.

 

[Chris Mellon]

Among other places where Rosen has said it, like his book.

In fairness, when on the one hand a lawyer (or 2, in this case) who
specializes in IP law tell you that something is uncertain, and on the
other hand, a non-lawyer (but certainly a smart guy) dismisses the
whole thing as stupid, I kinda tend toward listening to the lawyer.
Especially as, if you carefully read what is and isn't said, DJB
doesn't actually contradict Rosen or Lessig - he says that "as far as
he knows nobody has ever bothered the court with it", which is one way
of telling he's not a lawyer - a lawyer would say (as Lessig does in
his blog post) that there have been no test cases but his analysis of
the law is that there are inconsistencies and that were such a case to
occur, he is not sure who who would prevail. I'm not a legal expert or
a lawyer. But I certainly find Rosens detailed and well-explained
analysis of the situation to be much more convincing than Dans
hand-waving.