Tag: licences

GLWTPL – Good Luck With That Public License

GLWTPL is awesome!

GLWT Public License
Copyright (c) Everyone, except Author

The author has absolutely no clue what the code in this project does.
It might just work or not, there is no third option.

Everyone is permitted to copy, distribute, modify, merge, sell, publish, sublicense or whatever they want with this software but at their OWN RISK.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION, AND MODIFICATION

0. You just DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO as long as you NEVER LEAVE A TRACE TO TRACK THE AUTHOR of the original product to blame for or held responsible.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS 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.

Good luck and Godspeed.

Postcardware

I am not the biggest fan of shareware or other ways of limiting user rights when it comes to software, but if I had to pick one and call it my favorite, I’d go for the  postcardware.  Have a look at this good example:

Open source software is used in all projects we deliver. Laravel, Nginx, Ubuntu are just a few of the free pieces of software we use every single day. For this, we are very grateful.

When we feel we have solved a problem in a way that can help other developers, we release our code as open source software on GitHub.

A lot of our packages are postcardware —free to use if you send us a postcard.

 

On React and WordPress

I have a great deal of respect for Automattic in general and Matt Mullenweg in particular.  They have done an amazing job with WordPress, which is now used by more than a quarter of all websites.  But they are also a great example of how companies can work in the Open Source software space.

It’s not all just business.  Automattic raises the ethics bar quite high.  And today there is an excellent example of how they do it.  Check out this blog post by Matt on why WordPress will be moving away from the React JavaScript framework developed by Facebook:

I think Facebook’s clause is actually clearer than many other approaches companies could take, and Facebook has been one of the better open source contributors out there. But we have a lot of problems to tackle, and convincing the world that Facebook’s patent clause is fine isn’t ours to take on. It’s their fight.

Respect!

GitHub adds Open Source license descriptions

GitHub added Open Source license descriptions.  This is a tiny, but very useful feature, especially for those people who are not very well versed in the differences between GPL, MIT, BSD, and other licenses.  I wish there was a way to have something like this proprietary applications.  Maybe then people would pay attention to the end user license agreements (EULAs).

Creative Commons beta tests new search

Creative Commons is beta testing a new search implementation.  It helps with finding creative work (mostly images for now) that one can use commercially, modify, adapt, and build upon.  For now, it brings the results from a few different sources that you’d have to search separately before – 500px, Flickr, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, and Rijksmuseum.

I’m sure once the functionality and performance are stabilized, more resources and types of creatives will be added.  After all, Creative Commons works with quite a few platforms.

Oh, and if you’ve spent the last few years in a cave and don’t know what Creative Commons is all about, here are a couple of links for you:

Via WordPress Tavern.