Hacker News Reader

Comment by SequoiaHope | Hacker News Reader

> License: Copy me, no licence.

Probably BSD or Apache would be better, as they make it easier for certain organizations to use this. If you want to maximize copying, then a real permissive license is probably marginally better.

View on HN

CC0 would be in the spirit of what OP envisioned.

https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/

Updated to CC0!

That’s great! Really cool project too.

Ah right good point, I forgot Creative Commons, which I don’t usually use for code.

They do actually recommend against using Creative Commons for code and suggest using traditional code licenses instead [1].

[1] https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

They recommend against it for the traditional CC licenses (CC-BY-SA, etc.), but CC0 is perfectly fine for code, since it's basically a dedication to the public domain for jurisdictions that don't support that. The FAQ for CC0 says this explicitly: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...

I think the WTFPL is closer

https://www.wtfpl.net/txt/copying/

This wasn't in my employers list of acceptable licenses, so I got to go through the efforts of getting it vetted!

I suspect the goal is not to make anything easier for any corp

then you use GPL.

Doing whatever you want seems fine too?

then you make things easier for a corp. No?

Will WTFPL work too?

https://choosealicense.com/licenses/wtfpl/

Better go GPL so organizations using it have to open source any improvements they make

GPL has never been enforced in court against anyone with serious money. It’s not worth the virtual paper it’s written on.

Is that different with any other permissive library that has conditions? Also I found one case where Skype retracted their formal objection in front of court and the GPL was enforced. Not sure if that is serious enough money for you

(german source http://www.golem.de/0805/59587.html)

distributing it.

yeah, important point. thanks for correcting

Anytime. It's often, though not precisely, the difference between AGPL and GPL.

The author apparently wanted no restrictions on distribution, so GPL is not the right choice.

> make it easier for certain organizations to use this

Maybe those organizations should just use this and not worry about it. If their lawyers are getting in the way of engineers using this, they will fall behind as an organization and that's OK with me, it paves the way for new startups that have less baggage.

The benefit of not having lawyers is pretty limited. There are larger forces at work that mean the larger an organization grows the more it will be concerned with licenses. The idea that ignoring licenses will allow a company to outcompete one that doesn’t is wishful thinking at best. Moreover, I’m not making a judgment on these practices, I’m just stating a fact.

The lawyers don't even have to do anything. I avoid any code that's not MIT or equivalent for work-related things because I don't want to run the risk of polluting company code. The only exception is elisp, because that only runs in Emacs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com