Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Re: Why 80% of the projects on Github have no license?

Postby hathor » 10 Jun 2016, 01:42

Eh, I just don't like lawyers and licensing in general; it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I started licensing my games under my own custom licenses, because even MIT yells at you in all-caps and GPL is still too lawyerly for my needs. I don't suspect anyone else will adopt my licensing scheme, but any code I write from scratch is going under one of my own licenses and not someone else's license:

https://github.com/theNWO/licensing/tre ... r/licenses

Generally speaking, copyright law is BS so my licenses are using "Attribution (a)" instead of "Copyright (c)".
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Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby c_xong » 10 Jun 2016, 02:41

Sorry, just because you don't like copyright and lawyers doesn't mean you're not affected by them. Your licenses have problems and that will discourage many people from using your code as a result. When non-lawyers write licenses, it's the same as if non-programmers write code - it's going to be broken. I suggest you read up on bad licenses like the "JSON evil license" for what kind of problems that may cause.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Julius » 10 Jun 2016, 11:27

I split this off, as it is really a different topic. But yes... really don't make your own "license"... you might not like certain aspects, but a standard license is still always much preferable over a custom "license". If it isn't a standard license, most people will put it (justifiably) in the same category as "meh what ever" releases.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Lyberta » 10 Jun 2016, 14:34

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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 13 Jun 2016, 21:33

c_xong {l Wrote}:Sorry, just because you don't like copyright and lawyers doesn't mean you're not affected by them. Your licenses have problems and that will discourage many people from using your code as a result. When non-lawyers write licenses, it's the same as if non-programmers write code - it's going to be broken. I suggest you read up on bad licenses like the "JSON evil license" for what kind of problems that may cause.


Yeah, I am well aware of this. Just I need things to flow in a certain way and the GPL feels too complicated while MIT has all this lawyerspeak in all caps and atm I am more interested in communicating my intentions clearly to the end user than I am worried about getting sued.

To me, licensing schemes should have more of a handshake vibe than a "see you in court" vibe.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 13 Jun 2016, 22:06

Julius {l Wrote}:I split this off, as it is really a different topic. But yes... really don't make your own "license"... you might not like certain aspects, but a standard license is still always much preferable over a custom "license". If it isn't a standard license, most people will put it (justifiably) in the same category as "meh what ever" releases.


You incorrectly assume that I have the desire to be taken "seriously". The "meh whatever" vibe is precisely what I'm going for ;)
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby onpon4 » 14 Jun 2016, 00:05

hathor {l Wrote}:I am more interested in communicating my intentions clearly to the end user than I am worried about getting sued.

You are not the one who needs to worry about getting sued. It is all of the users of the program. If your license is unclear, you make yourself a threat to them.

Please, do not use custom licenses unless they are very simple and all-permissive (like the WTFPL). Trying to write anything more complicated than that and use it as a license makes it more likely that the license will not be compatible with other libre licenses, and could result in a proprietary license Either of these cases would put other people (not yourself) at risk. Not to mention, it's an added burden to anyone who wants to make sure that they are only using libre software, since they have to carefully read your custom licenses and make sure they have the necessary freedoms.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Akien » 14 Jun 2016, 09:27

Just write down the text of the MIT in lowercase if you don't like all caps... I don't think the text formatting is part of the license.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby c_xong » 14 Jun 2016, 13:26

No, don't change the case of the license. The uppercase has legal significance, so you're effectively changing the license if you do that: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/que ... n-licenses

I don't really understand this aversion to all-caps; it's a legal document, not something you read for your pleasure.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Taknamay » 14 Jun 2016, 22:02

Just to echo what others have said, the license is for the confidence of the users, not you. WTFPL should convey the vibe you are trying to give.
Check out the #freegaming tag on fediverse.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby charlie » 15 Jun 2016, 00:56

Just go public domain or WTFPL and be done with it.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby mdwh » 19 Jun 2016, 21:09

By default, one doesn't have the right to distribute - whilst your NWO-SA licence does grant this right, the NWO-CS one doesn't?

A general problem with self-written licences is that it increases the problem of licence incompatibility. Also - because of the risks of incompatibility, or a desire to restrict to "Free" licences - some sites or distribution platforms limit themselves to "standard" ones, or say those approved by FSF or OSI. Now, there's no reason why your licence couldn't be approved also if it becomes popular, but it is a hurdle to cross.

To me, licensing schemes should have more of a handshake vibe than a "see you in court" vibe.
But the bit in all-caps is not about threatening to sue the person using the work, it's about protecting the original author.

In some ways, I'd argue that your text is actually more of a court vibe - the "I agree" makes it read like a contract that you require someone to agree to. Open Source licences however typically don't require you to agree to anything (since they grant extra rights, subject to conditions), indeed the GPL makes it clear that it isn't a contract that one has to agree to.

The GPL may be long and complex, but that's because there are a lot of issues to go across when you talk about requiring people to distribute the modified source code (as your NWO-SA does). What if I link to a closed source library? What is "easily accessible" - and how do I achieve that if distributing code in say a hardware product? What if I create a derivative work to use internally within a company? The GPL has answers to all of that - not just in the legalise itself, but from people who have answered those questions.

Even if I didn't care about any of that, if I put your code into my GPL'd software, other people who do care about that aren't going to touch my software.

Now, it may be that you don't really care about any of this - I note that you talk about rejecting copyright altogether - so do you mean these are more your preferences rather than a legal requirement? But in that case, these shouldn't be called licences at all - go with WTFPL, and put these as optional preferences in your documentation.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 24 Jun 2016, 05:14

I added some text to my licensing schemes:

NWO-CS:
(In the event that this license is incompatible with whatever you plan
on using the software for, feel free to substitute the MIT License)

NWO-SA:
(In the event that this license is incompatible with whatever you plan
on using the software for, feel free to substitute the GPL-3 License)
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 24 Jun 2016, 05:35

c_xong {l Wrote}:No, don't change the case of the license. The uppercase has legal significance, so you're effectively changing the license if you do that: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/que ... n-licenses

I don't really understand this aversion to all-caps; it's a legal document, not something you read for your pleasure.


I think you're missing the entire point. The vibe is that it's yelling at you. Lawyers want that to be the vibe. But I want a vibe that says "freedom", not a vibe that says "I'm scared of the legal system".

Creative commons has the right idea by using friendly icons and burying the legalese. But I want to end up in a reality where the legalese is irrelevant.

Imagine for a minute that reality itself works in a similar way to GitHub or Wikipedia, where various forks branch off from the main reality repository. The system determines where your individual consciousness unit ends up when these timeline/parallel reality branches get merged back into the larger main branches. Say the system is run by some sort of artificial intelligence, that evaluates you from time to time to see if the focused energy you're putting out is aligned with the energetic signature of the reality that you're in, and it tries to manage this energy flow to determine where in the system to place your consciousness unit.

This is a system that I'm becoming increasingly more aware of and I'm trying to understand it better, so when I run into things that don't jive with me well like lawyers yelling at me, I feel like I should adjust the frequency of the energy flow by putting my own vibe out there. Maybe it's not technically the "correct" way of doing things but it brings me a lot of peace to just flow with it.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Lyberta » 24 Jun 2016, 14:04

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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby onpon4 » 24 Jun 2016, 14:14

No, legalese is needed because it's a legal document.

hathor, I appreciate that you've effectively given permission to use these works under the Expat License or GPL, but you're being silly. You still fail to understand: these documents are legal documents, not letters. They're not about "vibe". Very few people even read them, and those who do read them want to see the familiar legalese you have a strange aversion to. Because that legalese is clear.

And as for wanting to make it unnecessary: that isn't going to happen unless copyright is abolished. Until then, the closest you can get to that is a public domain dedication, or possibly a simple all-permissive license like WTFPL.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 24 Jun 2016, 20:56

FWIW, I like being silly...why should I take life too seriously?

I did some more research and I think I'm just going to use the Unlicense for now until someone convinces me why I should over-complicate my life with all this legal BS:
http://unlicense.org/
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Akien » 24 Jun 2016, 21:54

There's a lot of capslock legalese in Unlicense...
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby Lyberta » 25 Jun 2016, 01:07

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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 25 Jun 2016, 08:10

Well for music/art I feel more comfortable with CC-BY-SA atm.
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby hathor » 25 Jun 2016, 08:32

Akien {l Wrote}:There's a lot of capslock legalese in Unlicense...


Yeah that's the only thing I didn't like about it, so my OCD took over and I came up with this compromise:
https://github.com/theNWO/licensing/blo ... ses/NWO-CS
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Re: Creating your own custom license [split topic]

Postby brmbrmcar » 18 Aug 2016, 22:32

That is confusing. It says Public Domain, then says it needs credit. Just say if it does or doesn't. Just saying "use it but credit me" works as well as an actual full license.
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