Re: [tlug] Tlug Digest, Vol 41, Issue 14

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Jim Breen writes:
 > Charles Muller <cmuller-lst@example.com> wrote:

 > > Then, on the other hand, you have the case where people make
 > > assumptions about a license without actually reading it. When the
 > > Creative Commons licenses first came out, I applied it to many of
 > > my online documents, and soon found those documents appearing
 > > around the web in formats that directly contravened the
 > > stipulations of the license. For these people, the word "Creative
 > > Commons" itself simply meant "anything goes."

Sure, but the same problem occurs with "free software" or "free
content" and "open source".  If you want to be restrictive, you should
state those restrictions up front.

 > > After going through the trouble of getting most of these illegal
 > > usages (but not all) corrected, I went back to plain old
 > > copyright notices, which people seem to understand much better.

By which you mean something like the below?

 > I have the same problem. Actually I had it before I switched to a
 > CC-SA licence.  I contact them the offenders and grumble and they
 > usually/almost always fall into line.

I've always considered that simply citing a license name in my
work is tantamount to "just take it!"  Here's the boilerplate from my
most recent library:

;; Copyright 2009 Stephen J. Turnbull

;; This program is free software, licensed to you under the GNU General
;; Public License, version 2 or later at your option.

;; In English, this means that you may compile and run this program
;; without restriction, and you may redistribute copies of it in any form
;; as long as you include the full source to any binary files derived in
;; any way from this code, and license those copies to recipients under
;; the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.  Furthermore, you
;; run and redistribute this program with the understanding that THERE IS
;; NO WARRANTEE AT ALL offered by the author(s).

;; The precise conditions are somewhat less restrictive, and vary slightly
;; across GPL versions.  Please consult the license text.

Don't take it too seriously, there are several amendments I should
make (eg, note that "full source" includes anything you wrote that's
included in the distribution and everything that's required to produce
identical files, and change "understanding" to "your agreement").
Note that because there is a clear statement that it is the GPL that
applies, this permission notice can be as restrictive as you like.
(OTOH, you don't want to be more permissive than the GPL is.)