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I'm considering to apply a properly recognized license to MEKA, instead of the flaky current license that I've written. Not so much difference, but the main purpose for me is that using a known license helps in getting project stuff hosted and spread.

The MIT license reads as following:

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Which is possibly the less constraining license I could find.
There's also the New BSD license which seems pretty much equivalent:

Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

What do you think?

I think I would go for BSD because of the third clause, which is basically the only difference between both.
MIT is more explicit in examples of what's allowed but BSD permit the same.

Basically it means: anyone's free to do anything with MEKA.
Of course, I'll keep managing and maintaining the main branch and distribution so that it is kept close to MEKA original spirit.

the problem i see with those licenses is that anyone can make his/her own version of meka, without making available to everyone else the source code of the changes, so they could be added to the main branch of meka if they are interesting or useful...

richard_mtw wrote

the problem i see with those licenses is that anyone can make his/her own version of meka, without making available to everyone else the source code of the changes, so they could be added to the main branch of meka if they are interesting or useful...

In practice, people doing that are either:

1. Business, and then they would more strip out features and develop customized frontends (that we don't care about).
2. Lonely depressive individualists trying to take off the world with their tweaked project and falling asleep after a few month of fighting against the rest of the world.
In some cases this is even beneficial, since if it happens that the guy's work is of use, the community eventually can convince him, or is frustrated enough to develop a better equivalent.

I've been reading Machiavel nowadays.

probably. well, at least maybe the linux version will have the sound bugfixed if linux distributions start to include meka :)

Personally, Bock, I would reccomend a form of the Creative Commons License. It can be easily tailored to suit the requirements for MEKA. My choice (though again, this is my opinion... feel free to disagree) would be 'by-nc-sa', the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which would allow deriving for non-commercial purposes only if they distribute under a similar license.

Here's the text of how it would...

Quote

Copyright (c) <Year> <Developer>
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

You can view a full selection of licenses at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses and use the wizard to help choose your license at http://creativecommons.org/license

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8653 Location: Paris, France	MEKA licensing : MIT license, New BSD license? Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 1:37 pm
	I'm considering to apply a properly recognized license to MEKA, instead of the flaky current license that I've written. Not so much difference, but the main purpose for me is that using a known license helps in getting project stuff hosted and spread. The MIT license reads as following: Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Which is possibly the less constraining license I could find. There's also the New BSD license which seems pretty much equivalent: Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER> All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. What do you think?

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8653 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 1:41 pm
	I think I would go for BSD because of the third clause, which is basically the only difference between both. MIT is more explicit in examples of what's allowed but BSD permit the same. Basically it means: anyone's free to do anything with MEKA. Of course, I'll keep managing and maintaining the main branch and distribution so that it is kept close to MEKA original spirit.

richard_mtw Guest	Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:08 pm
richard_mtw Guest	the problem i see with those licenses is that anyone can make his/her own version of meka, without making available to everyone else the source code of the changes, so they could be added to the main branch of meka if they are interesting or useful...

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8653 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:32 pm
	richard_mtw wrote the problem i see with those licenses is that anyone can make his/her own version of meka, without making available to everyone else the source code of the changes, so they could be added to the main branch of meka if they are interesting or useful... In practice, people doing that are either: 1. Business, and then they would more strip out features and develop customized frontends (that we don't care about). 2. Lonely depressive individualists trying to take off the world with their tweaked project and falling asleep after a few month of fighting against the rest of the world. In some cases this is even beneficial, since if it happens that the guy's work is of use, the community eventually can convince him, or is frustrated enough to develop a better equivalent. I've been reading Machiavel nowadays.

richard_mtw Guest	Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:47 pm
richard_mtw Guest	probably. well, at least maybe the linux version will have the sound bugfixed if linux distributions start to include meka :)

BiafraRepublic Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Houston metro area, TX, USA	Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 2:51 am
	Personally, Bock, I would reccomend a form of the Creative Commons License. It can be easily tailored to suit the requirements for MEKA. My choice (though again, this is my opinion... feel free to disagree) would be 'by-nc-sa', the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which would allow deriving for non-commercial purposes only if they distribute under a similar license. Here's the text of how it would... Quote Copyright (c) <Year> <Developer> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. You can view a full selection of licenses at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses and use the wizard to help choose your license at http://creativecommons.org/license

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