Author Topic: Open Source licenses...  (Read 17535 times)

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Offline LapTop006

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #25 on: June 01, 2013, 01:05:04 pm »
I still consider all that open source lecence stuff nonsense. If you want to set it free , then do so. Release it to public domain. Done. All the rest is simply vanity and restriction.
It's free but i want the credit.. It's free but you can't do this... If you imply restrictions then it is not free. Period.

This comes down to what in the software world is called the BSD vs GPL mindset, BSD is "here it is, do what you like", GPL is "here it is, do what you like, but if you ship changes you must ship source on our terms", both have good and fair reasons to exist (I'm generally in the GPL camp myself).

One thing to add though, in many countries it's not actually possible to "put something in the public domain" without waiting for copyright to expire. If you want to publish something like that I'd suggest adding an explicit CC0 tag to make it as clear as possible.
 

Offline airiclenz

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #26 on: June 18, 2013, 10:25:24 am »
I see your point in just making it available without any license - just free - but there is another point to the story. It is the protection by the license that might be of big interest too. What happens if you make something available for everyone just by providing the download,  then someone - probably from the USA - uses it and burns his/her hand using your system. This person then sues you because your documentation did not mention that one does not touch the mains-cap after the board was plugged in...
 

Offline 0xFFFFTopic starter

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #27 on: June 18, 2013, 10:57:08 am »
I see your point in just making it available without any license - just free - but there is another point to the story. It is the protection by the license that might be of big interest too. What happens if you make something available for everyone just by providing the download,  then someone - probably from the USA - uses it and burns his/her hand using your system. This person then sues you because your documentation did not mention that one does not touch the mains-cap after the board was plugged in...

Do I really need a license to protect me from stupid people?
I'm no lawyer but that sounds like a bit of a stretch.
Who's to say whatever it was that was made open source was fit for any purpose?
 

Offline airiclenz

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #28 on: June 18, 2013, 11:20:15 am »
...just to make myself clear - I am not sure either, so it was more a question than anything else. Is there someone who can answer this?
 

Offline ve7xen

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #29 on: June 18, 2013, 07:12:46 pm »
...just to make myself clear - I am not sure either, so it was more a question than anything else. Is there someone who can answer this?
At least the BSD/MIT/Apache licenses all include clauses disclaiming any liability. In BSD and MIT that's basically all the license says :P. I'm not as up on the longer more complex licenses, but I'd imagine they're all similar. It's probably a good idea for any OSHW license as well.

Though I too find it hard to believe it's actually necessary. And if it is, rather sad.

This came across my G+ feed the other day, and seems appropriate.
73 de VE7XEN
He/Him
 

Offline cthree

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #30 on: July 06, 2013, 05:15:37 am »
Just release it to the public domain unless you intend on defending your copyright privileges in court against a license violator. You aren't. Set it free.
 

Offline cthree

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #31 on: July 06, 2013, 05:21:33 am »
I see your point in just making it available without any license - just free - but there is another point to the story. It is the protection by the license that might be of big interest too. What happens if you make something available for everyone just by providing the download,  then someone - probably from the USA - uses it and burns his/her hand using your system. This person then sues you because your documentation did not mention that one does not touch the mains-cap after the board was plugged in...

When you release something to the public domain you release all claims and rights to (and responsibility for) it. It doesn't belong to you anymore and unless you did it with the intent of causing injury, harm or mischief then it's not a crime and not your problem.
 

duskglow

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #32 on: July 06, 2013, 06:09:10 am »
Sun/Oracle actually recently lost a case BIG on exactly that.  They were trying to claim that Google (I think) copied their IP, and the only copying they could prove were the header files.  Well, those were called functional (because there's no other way to do it and keep the compatibility), and thus were not copyrightable.  That was one clued in judge - that particular judge was a part time programmer.   :-+
 

Offline ddavidebor

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Open Source licenses...
« Reply #33 on: July 06, 2013, 07:34:48 am »
I see your point in just making it available without any license - just free - but there is another point to the story. It is the protection by the license that might be of big interest too. What happens if you make something available for everyone just by providing the download,  then someone - probably from the USA - uses it and burns his/her hand using your system. This person then sues you  because your documentation did not mention that one does not touch the mains-cap after the board was plugged in...

When you release something to the public domain you release all claims and rights to (and responsibility for) it. It doesn't belong to to you anymore and unless you did it with the intent of causing injury, harm or mischief then it's not a crime and not your problem.

That depend by country and local law
David - Professional Engineer - Medical Devices and Tablet Computers at Smartbox AT
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Offline cthree

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #34 on: July 08, 2013, 03:51:31 am »
I see your point in just making it available without any license - just free - but there is another point to the story. It is the protection by the license that might be of big interest too. What happens if you make something available for everyone just by providing the download,  then someone - probably from the USA - uses it and burns his/her hand using your system. This person then sues you  because your documentation did not mention that one does not touch the mains-cap after the board was plugged in...

When you release something to the public domain you release all claims and rights to (and responsibility for) it. It doesn't belong to to you anymore and unless you did it with the intent of causing injury, harm or mischief then it's not a crime and not your problem.

That depend by country and local law

In some countries you can get life for an unhandled exception but only a small fine for having an orgy at an elementary school ;)
 

Offline zapta

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #35 on: February 26, 2014, 04:56:49 pm »
I want anyone to feel free to improve upon, tweak, customize, hack my work as long as they still give credit but I don't want any of my work to be used in a closed source design.



Open source with restrictions is a half giving. Please reconsider.
 

Offline Bored@Work

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #36 on: February 26, 2014, 06:43:00 pm »
Open source with restrictions is a half giving. Please reconsider.

Open source with safeguards against leechers is  strong open source.
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Offline jadew

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #37 on: February 26, 2014, 06:47:15 pm »
Open source with restrictions is a half giving. Please reconsider.

Open source with safeguards against leechers is  strong open source.

Open source is all about lechers.
 

Offline GiskardReventlov

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #38 on: February 26, 2014, 08:15:38 pm »
Not sure if anyone mentioned it yet here but I recall that there have been no cases where a license was enforced and uncovered code that was changed and then that code was contributed to the actual open source to improve upon the original open source.

I know some have revealed that Widget Corp. was using open sourced code and violating the license but many times it's just due to the Widget Corp. not having a clue.  And during discovery phase of trial we find out yes they used the code but they didn't actually change a thing!  So their only mistake was that they didn't post the code publicly. The code that they never changed.

The other thing that I like to do is to reduce this problem to (there's no problem, see above). Are your ideas or methods so unique that no else has done it alreay?  There are ~7billion people on the planet how many unique ideas can 1 person have? Sure there are some brilliant people but I doubt that there are that many unique solutions to solving problems that someone else hasn't arrived at as well.  Blah, blah, blah right.

Release it to the public domain.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #39 on: February 26, 2014, 10:08:32 pm »
Open source with restrictions is a half giving. Please reconsider.

Open source with safeguards against leechers is  strong open source.

Open source is all about lechers.
In that case you have no clue what open source is about. Doesn't matter... Lots of companies (big and small) where people do have a clue are involved in open source projects and are making lots of money with it even though they seem to give away their work for free. The interesting part is that customers don't pay for technology but for solutions. Open source is just technology. The money is in turning it into a solution.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2014, 10:11:22 pm by nctnico »
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Offline jadew

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #40 on: February 26, 2014, 11:41:14 pm »
Open source with restrictions is a half giving. Please reconsider.

Open source with safeguards against leechers is  strong open source.

Open source is all about lechers.
In that case you have no clue what open source is about. Doesn't matter... Lots of companies (big and small) where people do have a clue are involved in open source projects and are making lots of money with it even though they seem to give away their work for free. The interesting part is that customers don't pay for technology but for solutions. Open source is just technology. The money is in turning it into a solution.

No, I think you don't have a clue. The companies you're mentioning are the main lechers, it just happens that it fits their business model.

They leach from existing code (which is usually the main reason they are open source) and they leach from contributions (altho the contributions from the general public are usually slim).

Either way, nobody is farting rainbows here, they do it because they have to and if you think everyone should follow this "solution, not product" business model you need to wake up and realize that most software projects out there have no "solution" component, unless they suck so bad that you need someone to hold your hand while using them.
 

Offline GiskardReventlov

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Re: Open Source licenses...
« Reply #41 on: February 28, 2014, 08:25:02 pm »
The money is in turning it into a solution.

Yes that's been proven, proof is everywhere.

I don't have the link but the title is:
"Building an image processing pipeline with Python."

They use a lot of open source and then augment with their own code to provide a solution.
They use tesseract and opencv and others like Nginx, etc.
 


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