On 12/01/06, Ashley Yakeley <ashley@semantic.org> wrote:
I'm sorry this is dragging on so long. It seems public domain is hard, both in the U.S. and in certain European jurisdictions. And people want a disclaimer.
I did come across the MIT license, which may be close. <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php> Here is my non-expert attempt to adapt it, removing the condition, and changing "Software" to "Work":
"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining this work (the "Work"), to deal in the Work without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Work, and to permit persons to whom the Work is furnished to do so.
"THE WORK IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 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 WORK OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE WORK."
That sounds good. I'd vote to make it the default license. I think that allowing things to be sparingly attributed otherwise is a good idea. Most of the time it wouldn't matter, but there may be content which people want to make available on the site under different licenses, and I don't see any reason to prevent them from doing so, so long as which license things are under remains perfectly clear. - Cale