Software Licenses In Plain English

dugan · 06-11-2014, 11:47 AM

Now this is a useful website. The title should be enough introduction:

Software Licenses in Plain English

Now you don't need to freeze, like I did, when you're uploading your first project to Google Code, GitHub or Sourceforge and you're asked to choose a license.

ShadowCat8 · 06-11-2014, 05:38 PM

Greetings,

A great find and good info...

But, REMEMBER: In most cases, Software Licenses are written in "legalese" specifically to obfuscate their meaning and intent from plain language. (Q.v. "The Gospel Of Tux") And a couple of the companies I saw right off their home page have fought long and hard to keep it that way!

Again, that is a great reference! I hope they keep up the good work, because as technology continues to grow, we're going to need references like this!

Thanks.

sundialsvcs · 06-11-2014, 09:17 PM

Interesting.

Some software companies have tried to make their software license terms intelligible. For example, Borland International was famous for its "No-Nonsense™ License Statement":

Quote:

This software is protected by both United States Copyright Law and International Treaty provisions. Therefore, you must treat this software just like a book with the following single exception: Borland International authorizes you to make archival copies of the sofware for the sole purpose of backing up your software and protecting your investment from loss.

By saying, "just like a book," Borland means, for example, that this software may be used by any number of people and may be freely moved from one computer location to another - so long as there is NO POSSIBILITY of it being used at one location while it’s being used at another. Just like a book that can’t be read by two different people in two different places at the same time, neither can the software be used by two different people in two different places at the same time.

Even though today's licenses are a little bit more advanced ... after all, in those days, there was no high-speed network and software had to be distributed on physical media ... I've always felt that Borland "spoke volumes" simply by appealing to common sense.

dugan · 06-11-2014, 10:11 PM

My favorite, used by some Slackware packaging scripts, is this:

Quote:

This <BLANK> is released under the Dog-on-Fire License: If use of this <BLANK> causes your dog to catch on fire, you agree to send me five dollars. Or a picture of the dog on fire. Otherwise, you're on your own.

sundialsvcs · 06-12-2014, 08:02 AM

Hmm... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O5cGUs2OM4.

But, I ain't sendin' him five dollars.

metaschima · 06-12-2014, 01:45 PM

The creative commons site has deeds that also are in plain English:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
They used to have ones for a few other licenses, but I guess they took them down.

Soderlund · 06-15-2014, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Now you don't need to freeze, like I did, when you're uploading your first project to Google Code, GitHub or Sourceforge and you're asked to choose a license.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowCat8

But, REMEMBER: In most cases, Software Licenses are written in "legalese" specifically to obfuscate their meaning and intent from plain language. (Q.v. "The Gospel Of Tux") And a couple of the companies I saw right off their home page have fought long and hard to keep it that way!

Speaking of SourceForge, I interpret their TOS as obfuscated with the purpose of granting Slashdot Media more rights than granted by the license of your choice. Read the bold text:

Quote:

All Code, information, data, ideas, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, notes, messages, concepts, trademarks, service marks, or any other materials whatsoever (collectively, "Content")

Quote:

By sending or transmitting to us Content, or by posting such Content to any area of the Sites, you grant us and our designees a worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), assignable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to link to, reproduce, distribute (through multiple tiers), adapt, create derivative works of, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally perform or otherwise use such Content in any media now known or hereafter developed. You hereby grant the Company permission to display your logo, trademarks and company name on the Sites and in press and other public releases or filings. Further, by submitting Content to the Company, you acknowledge that you have the authority to grant such rights to the Company. PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU RETAIN OWNERSHIP OF ANY COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS AND SERVICE MARKS IN ANY CONTENT YOU SUBMIT.

I interpret that as giving them a BSD/MIT license-like right to do whatever they want with your code (although you still own the copyright, trademarks and service marks), even if you choose the more restrictive GPL license. I am not a lawyer though. But I am not uploading any code to SourceForge because of that.

I am probably wrong since that would mean that you can't legally upload anyone else's GPL-licensed works to SourceForge, since you don't have the authority to grant those rights to the company. Surely people do that all the time.

On the other hand, this is GitHub's TOS, which indicates that SourceForge's TOS is not just the same thing with different wording:

Quote:

We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. However, by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not trying to spread FUD or libel -- I'm just a concerned programmer.

tldrlegal.com is a great find. I wish there was something similar for terms of services of code hosting sites.