The Unlicense: A License for No License
,----[ Quote ]
| Whether the Unlicense will catch on widely
| remains to be seen, but public domain software
| may be more prominent than one would think. The
| Unlicense site has a link to Unlicensed software
| and well-known software in the public domain. You
| might be surprised by some of the software found here.
| SQLite, qmail, and MinGW are all listed as public
| domain software. netscan and Markdoc are among the
| short list of projects that have chosen to release
| code under a version of the Unlicense.
`----
http://ostatic.com/blog/the-unlicense-a-license-for-no-license
Recent:
On Selling Exceptions to the GNU GPL On Selling Exceptions to the GNU GPL
,----[ Quote ]
| When I co-signed the letter objecting to
| Oracle's planned purchase of MySQL 1 (along
| with the rest of Sun), some free software
| supporters were surprised that I approved
| of the practice of selling license
| exceptions which the MySQL developers have
| used. They expected me to condemn the
| practice outright. This article explains
| what I think of the practice, and why.
|
| Selling exceptions means that the copyright
| holder of the code releases it to the
| public under a free software license, then
| lets customers pay for permission to use
| the same code under different terms, for
| instance allowing its inclusion in
| proprietary applications.
|
| We must distinguish the practice of selling
| exceptions from something crucially
| different: proprietary extensions or
| proprietary versions of a free program.
| These two activities, even if practiced
| simultaneously by one company, are
| different issues. In selling exceptions,
| the same code that the exception applies to
| is available to the general public as free
| software. An extension or a modified
| version that is only available under a
| proprietary license is proprietary
| software, pure and simple, and no better
| than any other proprietary software. This
| article is concerned with cases that
| involve strictly and only the sale of
| exceptions.
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http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions
|
|
