Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
A bit from history
Author: arlen.p.walker@jci.com Posted: 8/23/2000; 2:59:21 PM Topic: Next survey: Are you an open source developer? Msg #: 20003 (In response to 19964) Prev/Next: 20002 / 20004
Back in the Dark Ages I released some Hypercard XCMDs. I copyrighted them under what I called (with tongue in cheek) the "Baen Convention." I posted them to the Mousehole, before its demise (kudos if you remember *that* board).The story is, Jim Baen was editor of Galaxy magazine and was using an MS-Basic program on his office PC when he encountered an error in the program. The code was protected, so he couldn't fix it himself. A clever friend of his supplied him with a program which would unprotect the code, allowing him to fix the bug and actually use the program, which he did.
He decided to publish the unprotect code, and after consultation with Galaxy's lawyers, he added the following copyright statement:
"Copyright xxxx (date forgotten and immaterial) All users are hereby granted all rights to this program on a non-exclusive basis. In fact, the only reason this program is copyrighted is to prevent someone else from copyrighting it and thereby restricting its distribution."
I write english more often than code these days, and when I do write code it's for use within the company, special purpose stuff that isn't useful for the world at large (generally data collection and analysis routines) so I don't have the opportunity to do more under any kind of distribution license. But I've always had a warm feeling for the "Baen Convention" as a nice, simple way of open sourcing code, without needing multiple pages to explain what's happening.
Yes, it doesn't require my copyright be left on the code. But no one else's copyright could validly affect the code, so that's no loss, except via prestige. And my attitude toward that is if you're a Good Guy, you'll give me credit. If you're not, I'd just as soon my name not become associated with yours anyway, so not crediting me is *still* cool
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