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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."
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.
Here's some more ideas:
Would you smell a nasty fart to prevent terrorism?
Would you give up your ability to see if it meant you could time travel?
Would you listen to an entire Britney Spears album if it could bring about world peace?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The Death and Repudiation License is nothing compared to the EULA of iPhone OS 5.1
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%.
Aw, come on, most of those are easy to pick. How about something that strains our decision engines a little bit?
-- Would you take a job as Steve "Monkeyboy" Ballmer's toe-cheese extractor if it meant Microsoft would publish only via OSS licenses?
-- Would you take a position as Steve "Tyrant" Jobs' fashion consultant if it meant Apple would open up the app store?
-- Would you lick Stallman's neck and armpit if it meant GNU/Hurd became a complete, usable, modern kernel?
These are the type of choices that would keep me up at night.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
That would be a good description of copyright, and thus copyright licenses, but not contracts in general. The terms of a contract are merely conditions which you require to be met before you will voluntarily give the other party some of your property, which you are in no way obligated to do. No matter what the terms may be, they impose no expense on others; one is always free to ignore the offer should one find the terms unpalatable. Licenses are similar, but the copyrights which give licenses their power are artificial social-engineering constructs which only exist at the expense of others.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
...."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