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Creative Commons for Software?
rumint asks: "I am working on a software utility that I want to distribute freely. Unfortunately, there is a wide variety of nearly unintelligible software licenses (unless you are a lawyer). Of course there is the GPL, but I'm not sure it fits everyone's needs. Is there a Creative Commons equivalent for software licenses? If not, does some newly minted law school graduate want to put one together and contribute to humanity?"
The BSD license lets people do pretty much whatever they want to with the code.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
Oh, come on now. Here's all you need to ask yourself:
* Do you want to let people distribute your software any way they want, including with less flexible terms than you distribute it? Pick the BSD license.
* Do you want to let people distribute your software any way they want, as * long as they grant others at least the same rights you granted them? Pick the GPL.
That's it. Those are your two choices. These are well understood and are easy to read (the BSD is easy to read because it's short, and the GPL is easy to read because it was written to be easy to read, as well as legally sound). Everything else is just a waste of people's time.
You can also trademark the name of your program and add a note that says something like "you can use the GPL as long as you don't name your program FooBarProg2000(tm). Otherwise you can't redistribute at all." Adding simple exceptions to an existing license is a good way to customize them without having to write new ones from scratch.
What you DO NOT want to do is write YET ANOTHER half-assed free software license. The world is full of them, thanks. Every damn company (or rather, their lawyers) thinks they have to invent their own silly license. Stop that! Besides, a license is not something you just "throw together". It needs to be very carefully written to protect everybody's rights yet not violate the fundamental software freedoms we all know and love (like being able to *use* the software for any purpose).
What I'm saying is, if really need a license other than these two, you better have a DAMN GOOD REASON. And don't worry if the license "meet's people's needs". It's your software, not theirs. Pick the license that gives you the warmest most fuzzy happy feeling in your tummy (heh).
And ignore the pro/anti GPL zealots. To a vast majority of your users, the various free software licenses like BSD and GPL are indistinguishable, and indeed can be completely ignored unless they are *redistributing* the software.
The reason there is no Creative Commons license for software is that there would need to be two, basically equivalent to the BSD license and the GPL. Because software can be distributed in both easily-modifiable and not-easily-modifiable forms, any software license must take special notice of this.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
There are too many licenses for you to be able to choose one that suits your needs, so you want to add even more crud to the pool of licenses available? As other have pointed out (and more will do so) pick one of the "biggies" - either GPL or BSD. Both licenses seem easy enough to understand, so just pick whichever is closest to your needs and be done with it. Let's not muddy the waters even more by adding to the mess.
There is no reason you cannot use an ordinary Creative Commons license for software. For instance, I was just using Python-IRC
But most people prefer either the BSD or GPL for software since they are both hugely popular and compatible in one direction (BSD code can be freely re-licensed under the GPL, and intermixed with already GPLed code). Although I suppose the same might be true of BSD --> CC, there is already a HUGE amount of GPL software out there that you may as well be compatible with if at all possible.
The unofficial
While you can add a note along with your code saying that FooBarProg2000 is your trademark, your exception is a bad idea. Imagine you distribute your software with the following note: "you can distribute this software under the GPL provided you meet criteria FOO, otherwise you have no distribution rights". Person A meets criteria FOO, and distributes your software under the GPL to person B. Person B is now free not to meet criteia FOO, as they recieved the software under the GPL. Adding exceptions like this needs to be done carefully.
Also note that if you do manage to phrase your exception well, people can't mix it with other GPL code, so it's not all that useful.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
There are 3 broad types of 'free software' licenses.
(1) You HAVE to release source code to the changes you make
(2) You dont really have to release source code.
(3) Software thats free but no source code provided.
Take your pick. If youre worried about further intricacies, just write your own.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Go look up the OSI listing. Theres a license for just about ANYTHING anyone would want.
Please do not make a new license for no good reason. It is just adding to the problem.
DYWYPI?
There's probably a good reason why the article doesn't say why the GPL is not suitable - namely that this hasn't been thought through.
As Torvalds says, the GPL is the simplist wording possible for a complex system. Keep in mind that Creative Commons licenses are not simple, they're just hidden behind a laymans explanation. Did the poster of the article realise that the 1-page summary of the Creative Commons licenses is not the legally binding part?
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Here's a link to a page on the GPL that you might understand http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/ and this http://creativecommons.org/license/ will help you choose a license. Look at the lower left of the page for easily read non-CC licenses.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
So what????
We are not talking here about everyone, but about YOU and YOUR software. It is TO YOU the one the license YOU choose should fit!
I think you focused the problem the wrong way.
You should think FIRST how do you want your software to be used and distributed, only THEN you should think about which license you should distribute your software with in order to achieve YOUR goals.
There is nothing as a "license mess". A license is only a written agreement between you and the one you share your software with, think about that. And then, you are lucky enough that you are not the first person in the world that wants to share his software with other people so you can take other's example. There are some license "templates" so widely used that they are even known by a generic name, like "the BSD" or "the GPL", that's all.
If one of those alreadly publicly known agreements fits you and your interests, pick it; if not, you will do as with any other 'a priori' agreement you would get into with other people: you would write it down, you would have it reviwed by an attorney and you'd stick with it.
And now, since you didn't tell us how do you want your software to be distributed, well, it's clear we can't help you about telling if there already is a commonly known "license template" you could use.
It was all the rage in the late '80s / early '90s.
Whew, you're quick! It took me about 10 seconds to see that Creative Commons offers not one, but two software licenses. Namely, the GNU GPL and the GNU LGPL. The only thing that Creative Commons adds is a "human-readable summary of the Legal Code".
Consider just making it public domain.
Most people who will bother looking at it will end up treating it that way, & who wants to waste time or hire lawyers to waste time looking for violations.
A license is just a lot of legal jargon that most people won't bother reading & that, if ever tested, will end up meaning something different that what you thought you meant when you wrote/chose it.
You'll get everything you'd get from a "creative commons" without the hassle.
The GPL or LGPL or even the BSD license perhaps become worthwhile when a project reaches some critical size, but they don't make sense for the vast majority of software written by one person & given away gratis.
is that it's overly complicated.
If you want to release on those terms, just state it: "this work is released under the terms of the GPL v2, with the exception that if you include it (or a derivative work) in your own work, you only have to apply the provisions of the clause 2 to this work (or its derivative) and not to your work." or something like it.
But then again, in the interest of full disclosure, I am not a firm believer in the "mysterious non-existing GPL linking clause".
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Is there a Creative Commons equivalent for software licenses?
Yes, it's called the "Creative Commons". More information can be found at creativecommons.org
Seriously though, did you miss the popup on the Creative Commons licence generator that lets you specify content type? Did you miss the content type called "Interactive"? What did you think that applied to?