[HN Gopher] MIT-0 License
___________________________________________________________________
MIT-0 License
Author : rudedogg
Score : 217 points
Date : 2022-04-02 01:28 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Scorpiion wrote:
| FYI this is from 2018.
|
| I thought it was something released recently but saw on Github
| that it's from 2018.
| clock99 wrote:
| lobo_tuerto wrote:
| Why not use the referenced MIT-Zero license instead?
| hgs3 wrote:
| Seems identical to the Zero-Clause BSD.
| throw0101a wrote:
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#0-clause
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license
| creatonez wrote:
| I believe it is. Note that 0BSD is not related to the other BSD
| licenses, but is rather textually derived from the ISC license.
| The ISC license is pretty much just "what if we took MIT, and
| removed all the text that is already implied in most
| jurisdictions?"
|
| So 0BSD is to MIT-0 as ISC is to MIT. Just a less verbose
| alternative.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's also been the unlicense fairly recently. They're all
| intended as lightweight ways to effectively put something into
| the public domain--to the degree you can in a given
| jurisdiction.
| creatonez wrote:
| Unlicense is known to have problems in some jurisdictions.
| There was a discussion about this on the OSI mailing listing
| years ago.
|
| StackExchange answer summarizing the OSI mailing listing
| discussion - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/qu
| estions/1471...
|
| The discussion itself - https://web.archive.org/web/201703010
| 20915/https://lists.ope...
| ghaff wrote:
| And there's also the anti-copyright ideological baggage
| associated with unlicense. To round it out there's also CC0
| but OSI objected to the explicit lack of patent grant
| language even though patent grants are often assumed.
| orasis wrote:
| What license is the MIT license itself released under? Can
| licenses be copied and modified willy-nilly or do you need to
| license a license?
| 1f60c wrote:
| No, the licenses themselves are protected by copyright as well.
| But the only license I can think of that explicitly states this
| fact is GPLv3, which begins: Copyright (c) 2007
| Free Software Foundation, Inc. <https://fsf.org/>
| Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of
| this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
| mike97 wrote:
| Ksksjzkzjssjsjksssjsjjsjszjff
| paxys wrote:
| That's a great question. The short answer - no one knows.
| Technically someone does own the copyright to these words, and
| if they are able to prove it they could sue every project that
| uses or refers to it, which is a troubling thought. That is
| very unlikely to happen, however, since the license originated
| at MIT (as the name suggests) and the current version is the
| result of a lot of iteration and modification done by many
| people over many decades.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Technically someone does own the copyright to these words,
| and if they are able to prove it they could sue every project
| that uses or refers to it, which is a troubling thought.
|
| That seems unlikely to be true. Recipes can't be copyrighted
| because they're functional. Legal licenses are also
| functional.
|
| (What's that? You think source code is functional? Shows what
| you know.)
| ghaff wrote:
| And trademark probably plays in too IANAL. I assume coming up
| with your own Creative Commons license unrelated to that
| organization would be problematic.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| This license was not released by MIT, and should not carry its
| name
| mlyle wrote:
| One issue with this is that there's no obligation to keep the
| license on it-- which means that the entire disclaimer and lack
| of warranty can get sheared off the software.
|
| Then in turn downstream users can legitimately obtain it without
| knowing that you're attempting to disclaim liability.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I think that's not really an issue for the intended use case:
| "code that is intended for developers to use as reference,
| teaching samples, examples, or templates that other developers
| may modify for their own purposes."
|
| Consider some libfoo, and in libfoo you include example.mylang
| as a "quickstart" for the common use case, and many people use
| this as a starting point, modifying it a bit to suit their
| needs but not much. _Technically_ you should attribute this
| file /function/class too, but in practice no one does, and no
| one really cares either.
|
| I've had people ask me to put a license on 2-line Stack
| Overflow licenses (it's already CC-BY, but people still ask for
| some reason, I guess to comply with company legal dept.)
|
| It's useful for stuff like that: you typically don't _really_
| care what someone does with your fairly simple examples
| /demos/etc. (which may not even meet the threshold of
| originality to apply for copyright protection) and whether they
| attribute it.
| nerdponx wrote:
| But isn't a demo or example code exactly the kind of thing
| one might want to disclaim liability for?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Think even more trivial than a demo or an example -- think
| more along the lines of a "skeleton" project. Something
| that isn't even a runnable example yet, just the outline of
| where someone else's code will go.
|
| Whether something like this is even copyrightable is
| questionable. But releasing it under a license like MIT-0
| removes any ambiguity -- whether it's copyrightable or not,
| the original author is allowing you to use it for anything
| at all, no strings attached.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Consider that code without any license at all, or even
| explicitly public domain. There is no implied liability at
| all. It carries as much legal risk as leaving a photocopied
| Anarchist Cookbook in your sock drawer.
| yissp wrote:
| If that's really the case, why does pretty much every
| software license feel the need to include a liability
| disclaimer? Genuine question, I've often wondered about
| this.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I suspect it has more power to prevent litigation (and
| disputes more generally) than to win anything? It's also
| entirely possible it's just [a much less derisive term
| than "cargo cult" which eludes me at the moment].
| ghaff wrote:
| Pro forma is probably the term you're looking for.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Sure, but the burden of liability falls on the one who
| relicensed your work and removed the disclaimer.
| awinter-py wrote:
| 'missing the middle of the sandwich' is the best thing in here
| and I hope it becomes a one-liner for this kind of behavior
| jayp1418 wrote:
| I think NetBSD licensing is best :
|
| http://netbsd.org/about/redistribution.html
| armchairhacker wrote:
| The MIT-2 License:
|
| Like the MIT license but you must put _2_ instances somewhere in
| your attribution. It is per-license, so the whoever includes your
| work in their own project must put 4 instances, and so on.
| paxys wrote:
| How quickly would the count of MIT-2 license files in your
| node_modules folder exceed the number of atoms in the universe?
| CSSer wrote:
| This does kind of get me thinking: why do we need to include
| full copies of licenses in distributions anyway? Couldn't we
| just include the name of the license and relevant details?
| sgc wrote:
| If your server crashes counting the MIT-2 license files, do
| they satisfy the requirements?
| idealmedtech wrote:
| Approximately 240 sub licenses deep (2^3 ~ 10, 10^80 atoms in
| observable universe)
| paxys wrote:
| That's only for the case where project A depends on project
| B which depends on project C which depends on project
| D...240 projects deep. But what if each of them has more
| than 1 dependency?
|
| Also you'd have to sum up the entire series, since the
| licenses at every level are included in the folder, not
| just the top-level one.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| ~~Yes, in my head I was considering all of those to be,
| in their total, the "sublicenses." Should have been
| better worded; but a total of 240 distinct MIT licensed
| dependencies in a project is the number at which MIT-2
| would run out of atoms to print on.~~
|
| Nevermind, I see your point! In reality it would be
| something relating to N sums of 2^k, k being highest
| depth dependency for each of the N projects. Obviously
| we're talking bounds and not exact calculations here.
| 0des wrote:
| Gentlemans agreement not to tell the node guys.
| mort96 wrote:
| Is... Is Amazon allowed to just use the name "MIT" for its own
| unrelated license? Doesn't MIT have some say over the use of the
| name "MIT"?
|
| Can I make my own license and call it MIT-2, to make my license
| sound much more established and prestigious than it really is? Or
| is this a case of "it's OK because Amazon does it and nobody will
| sue them for it"?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > Is... Is Amazon allowed to just use the name "MIT" for its
| own unrelated license?
|
| Absolutely not.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I would think the only way they could be stopped is if "MIT" is
| a registered trademark. No idea if it is. But actually, would
| trademarks even apply in legal documents? A software license is
| not a product nor a business and there's no chance of confusing
| it with one, so could I publish a Disney(tm) Public License?
| intunderflow wrote:
| It is a trademark - https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=737972
| 19&caseType=SERIAL_...
| wongarsu wrote:
| What makes you think that software licenses are not products?
| Licenses like the GPL or to a lesser degree the Apache 2.0
| are products that took a lot of effort to produce and are
| marketed just like other products. And I wouldn't be
| surprised if lots of EULAs are basically the same license
| sold by some lawyer or consultant to multiple companies.
|
| Software licenses don't just fall from the heaven and get
| adopted on their own.
| codeflo wrote:
| Oh for the love of God, don't introduce confusingly named
| variants of widely known licenses. If a new license is really
| needed -- fine, if lawyers think that's necessary, it probably is
| -- but don't name it _that_. No one will bother to check whether
| MIT and MIT-7BZ3 /2 are slightly incompatible.
| rafaelturk wrote:
| zeta0134 wrote:
| I use this license for a few of my NES libraries, since they're
| meant to be used in homebrew games where memory is a real
| problem. 32kB of PRG ROM (and the associated 8k of CHR ROM)
| doesn't leave much extra room for text rendering systems or
| fonts, and every byte counts. Sure if there's room, attribute
| away, but for simpler games there's _really_ no need. It 's fine
| :)
| raggi wrote:
| What happens once there are layers of execution of the lack of
| attribution, but then someone downstream comes into a battle over
| provenance? They have to backtrack now even more poorly
| documented provenance in discovery? Sounds awful.
| LugarOS wrote:
| At that point just go fully PD or CC0. Why have some random
| license nobody has heard of or wants to read about when you can
| just slap a CC0 sticker on it.
| boyter wrote:
| If you are Australian or German public domain is not an option.
| notRobot wrote:
| Hence CC0.
| bloaf wrote:
| Now I want a MIT--1 license that _prohibits_ attributing the code
| to the author in any way, including in legal filings, and then
| you don 't need any other part of the license.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I was first thinking that MIT came out with a modified version of
| its own license. This is more like work for for free for Amazon
| license.
| paxys wrote:
| The MIT license isn't owned or managed by MIT in any capacity.
| The name was given to it many decades ago (since it is derived
| from a bunch of licenses used by MIT at the time) and it just
| stuck.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > This is more like work for for free for Amazon license
|
| Pretty much any open source license would be that, the main
| difference this one provides is that Amazon wont even have to
| acknowledge you worked for them for free :-P
| ghaff wrote:
| Some people do want to simply put their work into the public
| domain to the degree they can.
|
| Personally a permissive license probably makes more sense but I
| appreciate someone saying they don't want to have anything to
| do with this copyright stuff.
| rectang wrote:
| I have used CC0 for code that I would like people to be able
| to use in code licensed however they choose, without having
| to bother with attribution. Sample code, for instance.
|
| If they're being responsible, they only have to note the
| provenance of the code in version control. After that, they
| can basically treat it like their own.
| _Marak_ wrote:
| GNU Affero General Public License
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
| skissane wrote:
| IANAL, but assuming a jurisdiction in which public domain
| dedications are likely to be legally valid (such as the US), is
| there any real difference between this license and a public
| domain dedication? Isn't this functionally equivalent to the
| public domain, even if it is technically not?
|
| Public domain code, I can do whatever I want with it, even
| publish it with all indications of its origins removed. Legally
| fine. But it seems like the same thing here-for a downstream
| consumer at least.
|
| From the original developer's viewpoint - the warranty disclaimer
| may give some additional legal protection, but you can put a
| warranty disclaimer in a public domain dedication too. People
| will debate whether warranty disclaimers in public domain
| dedications have the same legal force as those in copyright
| licenses-but maybe that too is a theoretical debate, because how
| big is the risk of someone being successfully sued by a code
| reuser who has zero commercial relationship (support or
| consulting contracts, etc) with the original developer-has that
| ever actually happened? Or are all these warranty disclaimers
| just lawyers saying "it's never happened, but we can't totally
| rule out the remote possibility that one day it might, so let's
| just include some legalese to improve our position if anyone ever
| tries to make it happen - a disclaimer doesn't cost anything
| significant anyway"?
| nickelpro wrote:
| Prior work in the public domain can have implications for
| future licensed work derived from the public domain work.
|
| Releasing under an extremely permissive license does not
| relinquish copyright. Any future derived work by the author
| would still be unambiguously licensable under any conditions
| they see fit.
| skissane wrote:
| > Prior work in the public domain can have implications for
| future licensed work derived from the public domain work.
|
| Isn't that just the normal case of a derived work? If you
| modify a public domain work, you don't have copyright on the
| parts which are identical to the public domain original, but
| you do have it on any non-trivial modifications/additions,
| and you can license the later (whether under an open source
| or proprietary license).
|
| A real world example is the Ghidra reverse engineering suite
| - it was originally written by US government employees in the
| course of their employment, and as such that original code is
| ineligible for copyright in the United States and
| automatically in the public domain in the US (although its
| legal status in non-US jurisdictions is rather more complex,
| variable, and at times even unsettled), and hence cannot be
| released under an open source license (or any other copyright
| license for that matter). But, they also accept outside
| contributions, which generally would be under copyright
| (whether by the contributor or their employer), and it is a
| condition of accepting those contributions that the
| contributor agrees to license them under the Apache 2
| license. Hence, Ghidra is an amalgam of public domain code
| (or at least, public domain in the US) and copyrighted code
| licensed under Apache 2. I'm not aware this causes any
| problems in practice.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| That seems pretty strange to me. Even if the contributions
| by themselves are not PD, they're inextricably linked to a
| PD work in a way that makes them lose meaning when removed
| from it. _And_ they 're still being incorporated into the
| work by a government employee, which means that the work as
| a whole must still be PD, even though small parts of it
| might not be.
| conaclos wrote:
| For interested readers: you can find a quick comparison of
| licenses at https://choosealicense.com/appendix/
|
| MIT No Attribution is included in the comparison.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| [Disclaimer: not a lawyer, this is not legal advice]
|
| I understand they're trying to get rid of cascading attribution
| requirements for enterprise (which is part of the reason NIH
| syndrome became so prevalent!), BUT I really dislike this
| incarnation for two primary reasons:
|
| 1. It has conflicting branding. How is a newbie gonna know the
| difference? How many will misclick it because it sorts first, or
| because they don't know it's different than true MIT?
|
| 2. Some users may read 0 suffix as "original", "optimal", or
| "first" (0-index), further polluting the branding.
|
| If they rereleased under another name these problems would be
| alleviated, but I don't think their intentions are entirely
| altruistic here.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It's the same 0 as in the CC0 license (which is called out in
| the description). Zero requirements.
| noizejoy wrote:
| Exactly, but I couldn't figure of how it actually differs
| from CC0, despite apparent protestation to that effect:
|
| > The CC0 and various "do what you want" licenses and various
| public domain dedications may be less attractive to the
| initial developer for various reasons (i.e., a license is
| preferable to a public domain dedication).
|
| Maybe the difference is more a branding/tribal association
| than a legal one?
| kijin wrote:
| CC0 is public domain. You waive all copyright (and even
| moral rights!) in a CC0-licensed work. MIT0 only waives the
| requirement to retain your copyright notice. It doesn't
| waive your copyright itself.
|
| CC0 contains language that is more suitable for works of
| art than computer programs, and is intentionally vague
| regarding which rights are being waived because the use
| cases are so diverse. (What does it mean to "perform" or
| "communicate" a program?) Developers might prefer something
| a bit more precise.
|
| CC0 is long and complicated [1]. You probably don't want to
| put that in the header of a gist.
|
| [1]
| https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Another good reason to throw this license in the trash and just
| use the older, better named 0BSD license that is shorter and
| has the same effect.
| schemescape wrote:
| For what it's worth, my understanding is that the 0BSD
| license was similarly _not_ authored at Berkeley [1] and,
| more confusingly, was derived from the ISC license (not the
| BSD licenses) [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#0-clause_licen
| se_...
|
| [2] https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD
| jhardy54 wrote:
| That's correct. Rob Landley and I came up with the same
| license text but called it different things.
|
| I called it the Free Public License and had it approved by
| the OSI under that name.
|
| He called it the 0BSD, and argued that since he came up
| with it first then it should be given his preferred name. I
| think "0BSD" is an awful name for an ISC-derived license,
| but eventually I gave up trying to argue with him because I
| felt that having two names was worse than one bad name.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Yes, but the spirit of "like the BSD license, but go even
| further and put no conditions on it" is pretty self-evident
| from the name, as long as you've heard of 4/3/2/1 clause
| BSD licenses.
|
| I think that is worth something. Something quite marginal,
| to be sure. But still a nicety.
| omoikane wrote:
| I have similar concerns about the name being confusing, in the
| sense that the original MIT license originated from MIT,
| whereas this license was written by someone else. It might
| appear as if MIT is endorsing this license despite only serving
| as an inspiration, and we don't know if MIT actually wants to
| endorse it.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| --- 1. It has conflicting branding. How is a newbie gonna know
| the difference? How many will misclick it because it sorts
| first, or because they don't know it's different than true MIT?
| ---
|
| Not a lawyer either and I deeply hate MIT(s) but my favourite
| concept in law is that ignorance is never a justification and
| is never used so, if you are using a license, don't be ignorant
| on that license? Or should we avoid doing things because there
| is people who wouldn't bother getting documented that could get
| upset? :o
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Since I'm one of the ignorant people, would you educate me
| and share the reasons for your MIT license distaste ?
| idealmedtech wrote:
| If you're a big enterprise with lots of open source
| dependencies, you have to audit your ENTIRE dependency
| chain to see which of them are MIT licensed, and include
| the license text for each one.
|
| It's a pain, so many big shops avoid MIT, and more
| restrictive licenses like GPL
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I'd like the OP to answer, because this argument is
| pretty much usable for most FOSS licences, not
| specifically MIT.
|
| Besides, legally, you should know all the licences of all
| your dependancies, and pulling that out is usually
| scripted in big shops.
|
| So given the strong aversion demonstrating in the
| comment, I'm expecting something different.
| gmfawcett wrote:
| So you're happy to build your commercial product upon the
| free works of hundreds of FOSS developers, but only if
| you can't be arsed to give them attribution? Cry me a
| river! An enterprise has a responsibility to manage its
| licenses. Complaining that it's not fun is just childish.
| leaflets2 wrote:
| Could be the attribution requirement, which this new MIT-0
| removes
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| All things being equal, people will use the license that is
| easiest for them to understand that it meets their needs.
|
| (One of their needs might be that other people also easily
| understand their license)
|
| Using familiar "branding" like MIT is arguably a way to
| communicate easily and efficiently.
|
| When people sell "gluten free pizza" they are banking on the
| fact that people know what a pizza is.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It should be 2-clause MIT to follow the pattern of 2,3,4-clause
| BSD.
| Aeolun wrote:
| MIT-0 (zero attribution)
|
| Works pretty well in my head. Don't think it's particularly
| confusing.
| orangepurple wrote:
| MIT-ZA
|
| Rolls off the tongue better too.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| And next time somebody asks what's the lowest bar to pass
| for the code to be shared as free software, you can say:
|
| It's the bar MIT-ZA.
| jedberg wrote:
| Don't forget to tip your server.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| Lexicographically, MIT comes before MIT-0.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| It's really not too bad with good tooling that can generate
| your notice documentation.
| paxys wrote:
| Releasing under a different name would have the opposite
| problem. No one would use it because they wouldn't know that it
| was the MIT license with the attribution condition removed,
| even if that was exactly what they were looking for.
|
| The 0- convention is also somewhat standard for this category
| of licenses (like 0BSD).
| sq_ wrote:
| Ha, 0BSD makes me realize they could've called it 0MIT, as in
| "omit attribution." Would've been funny and arguably more
| understandable.
| ksec wrote:
| This is actually a brilliant idea, may be you should submit
| a PR.
| forty wrote:
| Submit a PR!
| brian_herman wrote:
| I submitted a PR if they dont accept ill just fork and
| have my own.
| chrisshroba wrote:
| This begs the question, do licenses have licenses?
| remram wrote:
| With "MIT" in the title, this might be a trademark issue.
|
| And to answer your question, yes, for example the GPL
| starts with:
|
| > Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim
| copies of this license document, but changing it is not
| allowed.
| tedivm wrote:
| The proliferation of BSD licenses is exactly why I use the
| MIT license for things.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Not a problem in actual practice, derivative licenses are
| commonly identified as such and their slight differences are
| much easier to explain than the whole of any one original
| license.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| See: AGPL, LGPL for very popular examples of such
| modifications
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| AGPL adds more constraints, LGPL is probably a slightly
| better example.
| Jenk wrote:
| Neither of which use -0 suffix, however, which I believe
| to be GGGP's point.
| hvdijk wrote:
| > I don't think their intentions are entirely altruistic here.
|
| No part of what you wrote before this in any way suggests
| anything about the intentions.
| [deleted]
| 8note wrote:
| Usually when I see 0 tagged on something, it's actually
| chronologically after, but something more fundamental.
|
| The 0th law of thermodynamics is the main example
| needle0 wrote:
| So MIT is "do attribute me" and I guess MIT-0 is "you don't need
| to attribute me (but it's fine if you do)", I wonder if there are
| any "explicitly do NOT attribute me" licenses?
| oefrha wrote:
| And guess what, there are very good reasons to use a do NOT
| attribute me license:
| https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-slaughter-you/
| CameronNemo wrote:
| _You built a formula 1 race car and tossed the keys to kids
| with ego problems. Now i have to deal with Win10 0-days
| because this garbage._
|
| Never before have I been so motivated to write open source
| software.
| gxnxcxcx wrote:
| Alan Smithee learns to code.
| simfree wrote:
| Didn't realize Mark decided to do this after leaving HP
| Enterprise, but crazy that it took 4 years to get published by
| Amazon.
|
| For an open source evangelist, this is an odd way to engage the
| community. Really makes the FSF's principles look good, with the
| four freedoms and such.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| It took less than a year of him being at Amazon to get
| published. It took four years for this hacker news thread to
| happen.
| ghaff wrote:
| Realize that this is not new. It went through the OSI approval
| process and was approved maybe 2+ years? Ago.
| nickelpro wrote:
| I prefer zlib over this. If you're shipping my code in a binary I
| don't care about attribution, but if you're reproducing my entire
| repo in source code form don't claim that you wrote it
| Tepix wrote:
| That's not what this license is for. It's for teaching where
| the attribution would be a nuisance.
| pas wrote:
| wat!?
|
| I mean... yes it would, but isn't teaching proper care and
| attention of licensing important?
|
| If it's not the developer's original code then they ought to
| think at least a few minutes about where it came from and
| whether they have consent to use it and all that nuisance.
| ldjb wrote:
| From the Rationale section:
|
| _This license has proven useful for code that is intended
| for developers to use as reference, teaching samples,
| examples, or templates that other developers may modify for
| their own purposes._
|
| I don't think teaching proper care and attention of
| licensing is incompatible with wanting to release teaching
| materials under a licence that does not require
| attribution.
| mhitza wrote:
| How is this license different/better than Creative
| Commons Zero (CC0)? When I think of written content, I
| always think&go for a CC license.
| ldjb wrote:
| The short answer is that there is no difference.
|
| The longer answer is that CC0 is not a licence - it's a
| public domain declaration. With CC0, you relinquish all
| rights to the work, including copyright. With MIT-0, you
| still hold the copyright; you're just allowing people to
| do whatever they want with the work.
|
| Another difference is the one you alluded to. CC0 is
| designed for written content, images, videos, etc. It's
| not really designed for code/software. That's not to say
| you can't use it for software, however. MIT-0, on the
| other hand, is designed for code.
|
| So, in essence, these two legal instruments are in a
| sense equivalent, but there is enough nuance there that
| it could make a difference in a court of law, depending
| on how they are interpreted.
|
| There's also the fact that CC0 is quite a mature piece of
| text at this point, whereas MIT-0 is the new kid on the
| block. That might be something to consider, too.
|
| Also, obligatory disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer and
| that this does not constitute legal advice.
| rdpintqogeogsaa wrote:
| > _With CC0, you relinquish all rights to the work,
| including copyright._
|
| With CC0, you relinquish your copyright only, but
| explicitly retain trademark and patent rights (!).
|
| > _4. Limitations and Disclaimers._
|
| > _a. No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are
| waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise
| affected by this document._
|
| This makes it sort of iffy for software when software
| patents exist unless coupled with some kind of patent
| waiver or assertion of not holding and not being aware of
| patents. While you can argue with MIT-0/0BSD/whatever
| else there might be that there is an implied patent
| license, there is an explicit non-license for patents
| with CC0.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. Patents were why CC0 was withdrawn from OSI
| consideration. Now lawyers have argued that the patent
| grant is implied as part being given rights to use the
| software. But it was sufficiently controversial that many
| were uncomfortable with it.
| freemint wrote:
| There is some general FUD for using CC licenses for code.
| The CC0 works for code but is a lot more complicated then
| 0BSD.
| mhitza wrote:
| I see. I didn't mean to imply CC0 to be used for code in
| general. But for documentation that has code (reference
| documentation & code, getting started tutorials, etc).
|
| Which was the usecase for MIT-0 that the previous
| commenter seemed to hint at.
| detaro wrote:
| It's the official position of Creative Commons that the
| non-CC0 CC licenses shouldn't be used for code. Not
| exactly FUD IMHO.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Just curious: why can't they use zlib for teaching? zlib
| doesn't require attribution and it is a very simple license,
| so I wonder why the need for MIT-0?
| tonto wrote:
| This does seem like the right approach....without any
| requirements in this mit0 then you can just steal it outright
| it seems
| ghaff wrote:
| It's intended to be as close as one can get to public domain.
| So yes you can "steal" it outright like any other public
| domain work.
| chirsz wrote:
| Boost License has the same requiration.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| This is an amazing effort from Amazon. I've noticed Amazon has
| always been a very developer friendly company.
| cryptica wrote:
| Is this sarcasm? This license is horrible for developers.
| Attribution is literally the only thing they get out of open
| source. Any open source developer who uses this license could
| not possibly be using it out of their own free will.
| d0ublespeak wrote:
| Imagine AWS wanting to get rid of attribution. Sounds like
| something that isn't the slightest bit disingenuous.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I predict a wave of articles and blog posts about how open source
| doesn't work in about 5 years, after the new generation of
| developers that Amazon convinces to use this licence complete the
| process of being out competed by Amazon using their own IP.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Love that a 4 year old commit in a repo can cause people to
| come up with conspiracy theories just because it is AWS.
| ilammy wrote:
| Now, without even a line of attribution whatsoever in a LICENSE
| file _somewhere_ in the project.
| CSSer wrote:
| I mean, I'm already pretty cynical about open source. I
| wouldn't go so far as to say it doesn't work, but I think that
| many open source projects, or at least many of the ones in the
| fairly juvenile domain in which I operate, have intentions
| thinly veiled by the guise of corporate altruism.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Isn't this effectively the same as WTFPL? Of course I'm not a
| lawyer but they both seem to have total overlap in purpose and
| effect. The disclaiming aspects of MIT are basically restating
| defaults anywhere they're legally enforceable.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| In spirit, yes.
|
| In practice, the wording is much more legally problematic in
| the WTFPL. And licenses such as MIT-0 or 0BSD contain liability
| waivers that are not present in the WTFPL
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Is there actual in practice case law distinguishing them? I
| mean this question sincerely despite my skepticism.
| rectang wrote:
| There are tangible costs to crayon licenses, long before
| cases reach court. The more convoluted and amateurish the
| drafting, the more unclear the meaning and the more that
| lawyers make advising clients what to do about them.
|
| Sticking it to users who care about compliance is part of
| the appeal of licenses like the WTFPL, but it's ironic that
| the money flows to lawyers.
|
| When the ASF finally banned the JSON license for use in
| dependencies, the legal cost of figuring out compliance was
| one of the motivations cited by the people who proposed the
| ban.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Some people think that a short and simple license keeps
| lawyers away. It's the very opposite.
|
| There's a good reason why GPL and contracts for renting
| an apartment, buying a car etc are so long: it's to
| reduce ambiguity.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| For the GPL, this makes sense. In rental contracts this
| can be incredibly annoying. I'm one of those people who
| reads them from start to finish, and very frequently I
| have to have them amended because they're obviously
| either:
|
| - reused from previous rental terms, incorrectly
| restating basic local laws which have since been revised
|
| - downloaded from some website, with terms which are
| obviously illegal locally
|
| These contracts just introduce more ambiguity. They
| really should just reference the relevant legal codes.
| And at least in places with good protections for renters,
| that should maybe be mandated so the actual lease
| document is reduced to meaningful terms the renter needs
| to know.
| vasco wrote:
| > i.e., a license is preferable to a public domain dedication
|
| Are we that easy to fool by lawyers? The public domain is the
| public domain. Before someone comes out and says that the concept
| of dedicating IP to the public domain doesn't exist in some
| countries or is full of hidden perils, I'll ask you to provide a
| single case where code was attributed to the public domain and
| that became a problem for the author or for the users.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > The public domain is the public domain
|
| "I place this in the public domain" has a significantly
| different meaning in British English.
| bicolao wrote:
| What does it mean in British English?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| It relates to availability, not copyright. "Not secret"
| instead of "not copyrighted".
|
| So if you say "the facts are in the public domain" in BrE,
| that might mean that they've been published in a newspaper.
| It doesn't mean anything about their copyright status.
| [deleted]
| ram_rar wrote:
| Isn't MIT trademarked [1] ? Can anyone take a trademarked name
| for a license?
|
| [1]
| https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=73797219&caseType=SERIAL_...
| maydup-nem wrote:
| no, thanks, i will stick with gpl
| maydup-nem wrote:
| the pure satisfaction of getting downvoted by corposhills is
| immeasurable
| mattl wrote:
| Don't call this the MIT license. That's attribution to a real
| place. At least call it the Expat-0 license!
| ghaff wrote:
| The MIT license has a bit of a weird history between Expat and
| X. I spent way too much time looking into this a few years ago.
| The bottom line is that people were more casual about things in
| those days.
|
| https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license
| ProAm wrote:
| It's not the first time amazon took something from someone
| else, repackaged it and sold it as their own. AmazonBasics-0
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe OpenMIT-0 license, then OpenLicence-0 license (N.
| America) and OpenLicense-0 license (Atlantic East trademark
| zone)
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| You joke but I was legitimately wondering why they didn't
| just call it the AWS license.
| CSSer wrote:
| I'm just spit balling here, but it sounds like problematic
| brand association to me. I could see how someone might
| think that would mean _any_ code written by or for AWS uses
| this license. Maybe in MIT's case that's not as
| problematic? But tbh, I'm on my phone atm and I don't know
| much about the MIT license's history or origin. Are most
| developers bad at licenses? I'm feeling pretty naive right
| now.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Anecdotal but the majority of developers I run into have
| no true understanding of a majority of software licenses,
| if any at all. In my younger years I sat down with a
| developer who did know and got a summary about literally
| every license I could think of, and its still stuck in my
| head since. I feel like colleges should really cover them
| in some capacity with examples of lawsuits related to
| licensing disputes.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Yeah and it will also create a huge amount of unnecessary
| confusion. Very poor naming decision.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The cynic in me thinks it must have been deliberate.
| amelius wrote:
| "MIT-0" != "MIT"
| detaro wrote:
| "Don't use a confusing name!" "But the name is not exactly
| identical!" ... really?
| amelius wrote:
| "MIT" was confusing to begin with.
| ignoramous wrote:
| I think the name is a nod to BSD0 (BSD zero-clause) with MIT
| being equivalent to BSD3 (BSD three-clause).
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