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Would You Die To Respect a Software License?
Julie188 writes "Some 2,000 licenses cover the 230,000+ projects in Black Duck's open source knowledge base. While 10 licenses comprise 93% of the software, that leaves 1,980-odd licenses for the other 3% — and some of them have really crazy conditions. The Death and Repudiation License, for instance, requires the user to be dead."
Even if I like a software to be free as in freedom, I respect a software developer to do whatever with his software
Which license redefines math so that 1980 + 10 = 2000, and taking 93% leaves only 3% remaining?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Slow day.
First they eat brains, now zombies are using computers, next zombie lolcats!
If a software license exists, and no software is written that is available under the terms of that license, does it merit discussion on Slashdot?
It looks to me as somebody set up a site to create a gallery of TOSes so software writers can get some ideas... but then the site got attacked by the typical forum trolls took over and we get a comedy site as the end result. This belongs to Idle next to news from The Onion.
I believe a court would find that clause unenforceable and sever it from the rest of the contract.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The "freedom to encumber" works is like the "freedom to punch someone" ... They are both 'freedoms' that only exist at the expense of others.
-- Gregory Maxwell, discussion on licensing
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
But when I'm dead and unable to use the software, can my family punish them to the fullest extent of the law?
That's a load of happy hippie crap, if'n you ask me...
Death for a software license?
Give me the BSD License or give me...
No, not death...
What's the other one?
--Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
That would be unenforceable due to it being a condition that no one would accept. I forget the legal term someone help me.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
No, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't...
There's not much new in the article itself, though the ideas in some of the non-open licenses are interesting (the "Tofu license" is an interesting activism idea, though it probably misses some of its intention: companies that destroy habitat would be welcome to the software). I think it'd be interesting to see these tested and find what would hold up, and what wouldn't. Also, to the developer that got a Stratocaster out of his license terms: Congratulations.
Your honor it is clear the defendant rejected the BSD license. They must therefore have accepted the alternate D&R licenses. In recognition of this we demand the death of the defendant as fulfillment of the terms of the license.
We called it FUBKRO back in the day:
For Use By Keith Richards Only
I wouldn't die, but I would KILL...
The Death and Repudiation License is nothing compared to the EULA of iPhone OS 5.1
...to use any software with the D&R license.
I remember many shareware authors writing strange things in their terms and licenses.
I recall that a common graphics viewer those cool new GIF files (among many other formats) wrote that if you continued using their software after 30 days without paying then a demon would be visited by demons who would torment you.
I was just a kid, didn't have a job, and I never paid. Demons rarely ever visited, and when they did it was just to borrow a cup of sugar or use the phone.
One of my schoolmates released some software with a custom license, which was basically the old-form original UC Berkeley BSD license with a restriction prohibiting any use by persons in "Country Code F", defined as (paraphrasing from memory):
"France, Belgium, Quebec, Sengal, Ghana, Did we mention France?"
I think it was bad experiences with language classes in high school, but I'm not sure.
The summary left out part of a sentence:
It's important to note that the top 10 licenses cover 93% of all projects and the top 20 almost 97%.
The D&R license doesn't require anyone to die... you just have to be dead to use software under it. The license even specifies how this is to be accomplished. You're allowed to tell your heirs to use the software on your behalf after you're dead.
The really puzzling clause is the revocation clause, which not only allows the licensor to revoke the license, but proclaims that the licensor WILL revoke the license, and then the heirs will be punished "to the fullest extent of the law." I believe a court would only find liability for usage AFTER the licensor revoked, regardless of the drafter's intention.
Another strange clause seems to say that ghosts and angels are not considered dead for purposes of the license. Pure silliness, of course. What court would claim jurisdiction over angels and ghosts? Certainly not a human one. And an inhuman one is not likely to respect software licenses. The drafter made a big mistake here in failing to define ghosts and angels. These words are just begging for a legal definition.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Would the software license [orig.: 'my country'] die for me?"
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Hey, some of us zombie programmers like to keep the code within a nice small circle. It's kind of a undead pride to release some code under the kill and kill-a-like license. Although the PCL's* don't usually understand the brotherhood that we zombies have, we can usually get those spineless incorporeal asses in HR to back us up. But it's not like we're elitists or a specifically close-minded group. We welcome wight web-masters, c/c++ cadavermen, matlab mummies, ZZT-oop zombies, go ghouls, and scripting skeletons. They're all welcome under my licenses.
*Pointy Crowned Liches
I remember one license that I saw that included a clause that said (approximately),
"Upon violation of any of these terms, ownership of the user's immortal soul is transferred to the vendor"
Sounds like an episode of Buffy.
I saw this once on the intertubes:
I am willing to die to prove that my god exists!!! Are you willing to die to prove that he doesn't!
So it's all well and good.
Stick Men
I hope it's for a daemon...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Does it help if you don't have a life?
Shouldn't be a problem for most geeks.
Many years ago, a friend of mine came up with the term "thereware". As in "if it's there, you can use it".
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
...."the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility." That's in Sun's EULA. For real.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I think this is definite racism against zombies and i'd take this court if i could only find some brains.
Sure, no problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.
Sadly, the original source of this license is gone (it was the only worthwhile content in geocities) the intertubes never forget: http://web.archive.org/web/20080208115239/http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5947/bugroff.html
No, but I'd probably die of boredom while reading it...
A corporation is considered to be a legal person who is not alive. (Note a normal person is considered to be a natural person) It seems like a corporation could use the software legally under this license. Just making an observation. This is not legal advice, IANAL yet
Faith_Healer -- The antethsis to almost everything, and the worlds worst speller.
Somewhat related is one of my favorite fortune cookies:
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All
software is supplied as is, without guarantee. The user assumes all
responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features,
including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk
head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve
gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local
electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion,
hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic
radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components,
windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning
mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the
distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery
bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.
The reality distortion field will not be weaponized!
Your heirs are living beings. The EULA explicitly states that no living beings may use the software as-licensed. This clearly results in a vicious cycle in which your descendants are punished in perpetuity. I'm guessing the US budget deficit operates under a similar EULA...
My family and a few select friends that I believe to be better people than myself.
I would like to think I would give my life if it meant saving more that one person. As Spock said (which probably came from someone else I'm sure): The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few or the one.
There are several constraints on these things of course, and in reality if it comes right down to it, I would probably not have the courage to do so, even if I think I do now while I'm not facing the decision directly.
I wouldn't give my life for anything else. No law, no contract, no license, nothing else.
Don't confuse me however, I'm not doing it for someone else, its more that I would do it because I couldn't stand to live with myself if I was the one left behind. I don't think I could live without my wife and children, and I have some friends that are really good people which make the world a better place.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
GNO
(Ignore this line. It exist only to get past the always-annoying Slashcensor )
The general point of your quip is a good one, but your preamble condition is unnecessarily narrow, and suggests an agenda.
A much better formulation would be:
Your "freedom to encumber" does of course fit that description well, but so does the "freedom to unencumber". An example of the latter is the "freedom" in a BSD license by which a BSD project's source code can be closed. Such closing is a "freedom" only at the expense of others who wish it to remain open, which matches your quip exactly.
under the acta you may have to as your may be bypassing some DRM.
You stole my subject line!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I was an adult, had a job, and never bought (mainly because I wasn't especially interesting in their software, although also because, as understand it, seriously contemplating selling ones soul is enough of a sin that one is probably damned, even if that particular contract is not accepted). The demons that visited me were the usual ones that visited any MS-DOS or Windows user at the time, and entirely unrelated to that license.
The Death and Repudiation License, for instance, requires the user to be dead.
License requirements for EA games these days certainly make this license seem benevolent in comparison.
Thanks, that's exactly the message I was vaguely remembering! Indeed, how could I have forgotten Graphics Workshop? I used it almost as much as my beloved X-Tree Gold. (I still miss that program sometimes)
You can bet your life that if someone walking this planet right now proved to be an angel, the law would insist that they ARE subject to all "human" laws ( as a "person" ), and if they try any Sodom+Gomorrah style annihilation, that'd be all-out-war.
Nuke vs Angel?
It'd keep being "escalated" by assumed authority until it got to nukes or mega-hostages or something...
Authority does NOT acknowledge any god other than itself.
Ever.
In an "intellectual property" (patent on your neurons!) world, the best balance would be the GNU (A)(L)GPL for long term insurance of open source software quality. Once IP is gone (patent system etc...), license won't matter because everything will be public domain (everything not physical will be free to copy/modify/improve/share)... since then, GNU (A)(L)GPL in the meantime.
Are u sure? I am pretty sure I saw one military contractor with a Naval combat system running windows. I believe it was a Windows Embedded, but I think they said they can run Outlook right on the console! From memory it might have been a SAAB system.
I'll go with BSD, thank you.
"Copyright (c) 2003 why the lucky stiff"
Gee, that screen name sounds awfully familliar...
my (first) license says that if you can read it, you're not allowed to use it.
then i have the other license (second) that says that only if you accept the other (first)
license can you use this license.
*disclaimer : i have my own language