Flower opened

[Gregor Richards]

bobef wrote:
> LICENSE: use without restrictions at your own risk and responsibility unless this use is resulting (directly or indirectly) harm to any sentient being

Gad I hate being the licensing nazi. Wait, no ... what's that thing 
that's like hate but is the opposite ...

Aside from the poor grammar of the license, it's also fairly nonsensical.

If I modify your code, and then give it to a friend of mine, and they 
modify it, and then they give it to somebody else, and then their third 
cousin twice removed borrows their computer and sends the code to their 
great-grand-niece's lesbian life partner's dog's groomer's husband, and 
he works for NASA and decides to give it to his astronaut friend who 
runs it while in space, and it hangs and causes the life support systems 
to fail temporarily, which makes somebody's breathing a bit awkward for 
a minute, I've just violated your license while not even touching your 
software. You've mixed what should be a liability disclaimer in as a 
(fairly ridiculous) licensing term.

Oh right, and aside from that, you technically haven't allowed 
redistribution. Whether that's intentional or not, Idonno.


I know that people don't like the legalese involved in licenses, but as 
it turns out, rolling your own non-legalese license is always a terrible 
solution. The fact is that these "spirit-of-the-license" licenses can 
and have been turned against people. There is, however, a very simple 
solution: A huge pile of well-accepted licenses which do what they're 
supposed to and actually make sense.

If you're aiming for the "all-rights" license, here's the unconditional 
MIT license:

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to 
deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING 
FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

  - Gregor Richards