From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Jun 20 12:40:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from flood.ping.uio.no (flood.ping.uio.no [129.240.78.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CCAE137B406 for ; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 12:40:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from des@ofug.org) Received: (from des@localhost) by flood.ping.uio.no (8.9.3/8.9.3) id VAA61001; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 21:40:37 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from des@ofug.org) X-URL: http://www.ofug.org/~des/ X-Disclaimer: The views expressed in this message do not necessarily coincide with those of any organisation or company with which I am or have been affiliated. To: "Jeremy C. Reed" Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: public domain vs. copyright, license, disclaimer References: From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Date: 20 Jun 2001 21:40:36 +0200 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Lines: 21 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org "Jeremy C. Reed" writes: > I am interested in hearing opinions, ideas and references on why using a > BSD-type license is better (or not better) than simply releasing code as > "public domain". In the US - at least in some states - you may be liable for damages unless you explicitly disclaim any and all responsibility for the consequences of using your software. The disclaimer (the stuff in capital letters in the license) protects you against that. The rest of the license basically says that anyone can do whatever they want with the code, as long as they don't lie about who did it (i.e. they can't say they wrote it themselves, and they can't use your name to advertise for derivated software). In other words, the license is there to protect you more than anything else, and it probably wouldn't be wise to use a shorter license without consulting an attorney first. Disclaimer: IANAL; consider this hearsay. DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@ofug.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message