Re [OT] Snakey Problem

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Wieder wrote:

 > Not wanting to get into licensing wars here (the 'silly licensing'
 > thing was not meant to be a poke at LC), but the stacks I sell have an
 > initial low purchase price but no 'license' involved.

Everyone who respects creative work, and certainly every professional 
looking out for the well-being of their customers and their company, 
doesn't just want licensing, they need it.

The Berne Convention codified into international law a deeply profound 
idea:  the author of an original creative work fully owns that work at 
the very moment of creation, and has sole authority over how it is 
shared.  In doing so, we now have nearly-universal agreement that the 
products of the human mind are no less important than the products of 
our hands.  Recognizing this primacy of creators encourages creation.

Licensing is the means by which a creator lets the world know what their 
intentions are for the thing they've created.

Without a license, the principles that gave rise to the Berne Convention 
take precedence, so the work belongs only to its creator and can be 
distributed by no one.

Licenses express how a creator wants to let others share the work.

Even if the author wants to completely transfer all rights to the work 
to everyone on the planet without any restrictions of any kind, that 
needs to be explicitly declared (using "Public Domain" for that is 
especially useful since the phrase is well recognized as serving that 
purpose).

Most other licenses retain ownership by the work's creator, granting 
various permissions for others to use and share the work.  Some of these 
licenses may also grant rights to the source code, others may keep the 
source code proprietary.

We have many licenses for many purposes, and it is the creator's right 
to craft their own license if they choose (though there are negative 
implications with open source projects using a non-standard license, but 
that's another topic).

The main point here is that any copyrightable work released without any 
specific license at all cannot ethically or legally be used by anyone.

Whether that's enforced is a separate matter, but those who respect 
original creative works will expect a license to allow them to know what 
they can and cannot do with it.

Because if there is no license, under Berne Convention jurisdiction they 
can do nothing with it.

And personally, I think that's very useful for all of us, well worth the 
time it takes to find and include explicit license terms that express 
our intentions.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com