Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: scriptingNews outline for 8/26/2000

Author:Fredrik Lundh
Posted:8/26/2000; 8:47:54 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 8/26/2000
Msg #:20317 (In response to 20311)
Prev/Next:20316 / 20318

PPPPS: More than 80 percent of the 195 people who participated in the survey so far said that my base64 code release was open source. Lawyers argue that it wasn't. However I specifically asked non-programmers to stay on the sidelines and let programmers work on this among ourselves. So far, programmers haven't tried to define integrity and ethics in the legal profession. So stay out of our profession please. (A hopeless plea, I know.)

sorry, dave, but that's irrelevant: if you post a piece of code (writing, music, multimedia, art, whatever) without explicitly putting it into the public domain, you still own the copyright. and if you own the copyright, you can change your mind later on and sue me for using your code without asking. (and don't tell me you never change your mind ;-)

now, if I had *asked* you before reusing your code, things might be a bit different (you could probably still sue me if you changed your mind, though, and hope that I misplaced that mail long ago).

on the other hand, if everyone using code I've written and posted/published somewhere would write in and ask me if they could use it, I wouldn't have time to do anything but mailing out permission notes. that's why I usually slap python-style licenses on everything I do.

[update: fwiw, I'd still say it's open source. after all, the source is out in the open, so what else can it be ;-) the only downside is that I cannot use it without asking first]

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