118 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
118 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
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My collected rationales for placing these libraries
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in the public domain:
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1. Public domain vs. viral licenses
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Why is this library public domain?
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Because more people will use it. Because it's not viral, people are
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not obligated to give back, so you could argue that it hurts the
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development of it, and then because it doesn't develop as well it's
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not as good, and then because it's not as good, in the long run
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maybe fewer people will use it. I have total respect for that
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opinion, but I just don't believe it myself for most software.
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2. Public domain vs. attribution-required licenses
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The primary difference between public domain and, say, a Creative Commons
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commercial / non-share-alike / attribution license is solely the
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requirement for attribution. (Similarly the BSD license and such.)
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While I would *appreciate* acknowledgement and attribution, I believe
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that it is foolish to place a legal encumberment (i.e. a license) on
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the software *solely* to get attribution.
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In other words, I'm arguing that PD is superior to the BSD license and
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the Creative Commons 'Attribution' license. If the license offers
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anything besides attribution -- as does, e.g., CC NonCommercial-ShareAlike,
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or the GPL -- that's a separate discussion.
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3. Other aspects of BSD-style licenses besides attribution
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Permissive licenses like zlib and BSD license are perfectly reasonable
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in their requirements, but they are very wordy and
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have only two benefits over public domain: legally-mandated
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attribution and liability-control. I do not believe these
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are worth the excessive verbosity and user-unfriendliness
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these licenses induce, especially in the single-file
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case where those licenses tend to be at the top of
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the file, the first thing you see.
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To the specific points, I have had no trouble receiving
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attribution for my libraries; liability in the face of
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no explicit disclaimer of liability is an open question,
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but one I have a lot of difficulty imagining there being
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any actual doubt about in court. Sometimes I explicitly
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note in my libraries that I make no guarantees about them
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being fit for purpose, but it's pretty absurd to do this;
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as a whole, it comes across as "here is a library to decode
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vorbis audio files, but it may not actually work and if
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you have problems it's not my fault, but also please
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report bugs so I can fix them"--so dumb!
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4. full discussion from stb_howto.txt on what YOU should do for YOUR libs
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```
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EASY-TO-COMPLY LICENSE
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I make my libraries public domain. You don't have to.
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But my goal in releasing stb-style libraries is to
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reduce friction for potential users as much as
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possible. That means:
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a. easy to build (what this file is mostly about)
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b. easy to invoke (which requires good API design)
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c. easy to deploy (which is about licensing)
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I choose to place all my libraries in the public
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domain, abjuring copyright, rather than license
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the libraries. This has some benefits and some
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drawbacks.
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Any license which is "viral" to modifications
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causes worries for lawyers, even if their programmers
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aren't modifying it.
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Any license which requires crediting in documentation
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adds friction which can add up. Valve has a huge list
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(http://nothings.org/remote/ThirdPartyLegalNotices_steam_2019.html)
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of all of these included in each game they ship,
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and it's insane, and obviously nobody ever looks
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at it so why would you care whether your credit
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appeared there?
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Permissive licenses like zlib and BSD license are
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perfectly reasonable, but they are very wordy and
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have only two benefits over public domain: legally-mandated
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attribution and liability-control. I do not believe these
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are worth the excessive verbosity and user-unfriendliness
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these licenses induce, especially in the single-file
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case where those licenses tend to be at the top of
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the file, the first thing you see. (To the specific
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points, I have had no trouble receiving attribution
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for my libraries; liability in the face of no explicit
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disclaimer of liability is an open question.)
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However, public domain has frictions of its own, because
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public domain declarations aren't necessary recognized
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in the USA and some other locations. For that reason,
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I recommend a declaration along these lines:
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// This software is dual-licensed to the public domain and under the following
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// license: you are granted a perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, modify,
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// publish, and distribute this file as you see fit.
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I typically place this declaration at the end of the initial
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comment block of the file and just say 'public domain'
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at the top.
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I have had people say they couldn't use one of my
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libraries because it was only "public domain" and didn't
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have the additional fallback clause, who asked if
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I could dual-license it under a traditional license.
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My answer: they can create a derivative work by
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modifying one character, and then license that however
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they like. (Indeed, *adding* the zlib or BSD license
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would be such a modification!) Unfortunately, their
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lawyers reportedly didn't like that answer. :(
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```
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