Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Finally an end to flamewars: a REAL free licence 4 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • DISCLAIMER: IANAL

    While I endorse its spirit, I'm afraid it suffers from the failings of many other such licenses, namely, lack of indemnification.

    If you've ever been through the process of getting business - esp. E&O - insurance, you'll understand that indemnification is pretty important. Which is why some licenses have been updated recently (e.g., Apache 2.0) to indeminify. Sure, it won't stop you from getting sued, but it makes harder for the plaintiff to get very far unless they can prove malici

    • I agree, but the AFL falls short on a count at which the WFTPL is unbeatable: brevity and simplicity.

      Personally, my ideal licence (for works I am not significantly invested in; GPL otherwise) would state the following:

      1. Do not claim the work is yours.
      2. Do with it whatever you want.
      3. Don’t blame me.

      This is very close to the MIT licence, except there is no copyright notice obligation. You may just not claim you wrote it.

      • Not allowed to claim you wrote the software doesn't prevent my brother from claiming I wrote it.

        I prefer to use MIT, with releasing it into the public domain as a close second. I seriously dislike the GPL.

        • Good catch on the loophole, but I wasn’t drafting licence text – merely outlining the statements. One would hope that a lawyer would catch that, and I would never write an actual licence without having a lawyer look at it.

          I does not surprise me that you dislike the GPL. Frankly, I would have been surprised if you didn’t. I think copyleft has its place, though. (Just like non-free software does.) The MIT licence is what I use as well when I don’t care about copyleft (ie. in most cases).

          Don’t put things in the public domain. Many jurisdictions do not have such a legal construct (German law, f.ex.), so putting things in the public domain will make them harder to use for some of your audience than if you retained copyright.

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.