DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[John Colvin]

On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 at 14:40:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> You're really splitting hairs at this point.  If you _allow_ 
> almost anything, as most permissive licenses like the BSD or 
> MIT license do, nobody is going to then ask permission of the 
> community for every possible thing they might do, to see who 
> "wants" it, particularly since the community hasn't stated 
> anything publicly.  Since the community likely has a variety of 
> opinions, as you yourself just admitted, such a poll of "wants" 
> would likely be meaningless anyway.
>
> Unless the particular community puts out a public statement of 
> "wants" that most of them can get behind, which very few of 
> them do, it is silly to talk about what they might "want" which 
> isn't in the license.  The license is essentially all that 
> matters.

The difference between what people allow and what people want is 
much more significant than just "splitting hairs". However, I 
agree that there is often no coherent set of "wants" in a 
community, which makes it hard to consider them meaningfully.

However, I do believe there's a level of common courtesy that 
should be honoured when using other people's work in a 
significant project, including at the very least making them 
aware that you will be doing so (anonymously, if secrecy is 
important). I know many people will just take whatever they can 
get and give as little as they can, but that doesn't make it 
right.


I suspect we will never see eye to eye on this. You are convinced 
that the letter of the licence is all that matters, I am not.