I am going to take you literally and copy the first few lines as license for my software!!!

juwo-works.blogspot.com

Hi Anil,

Glad to hear it. I’d be happy to grant you the right to copy the license in it’s entirety.

Keep in mind, as stated in the last line, “these rights, on this notice, rely” means that in order to exercise your rights “to copy, share, and modify”, you must retain the entire poem (uh, I mean, license). But in this case,

Work and notice are one and the same.
This paradox makes a poem less lame.
Moral right I trust,
if change you must,
is attribution toward glory and fame.

But for all that, I have little need.
One should offer gifts without greed,
neither string nor rope,
should entangle the hope,
that our works may grow from our seed.

Anyway Anil, enjoy.

Alex

Hehe, this is awesome! kudos~

This. Is. So. Cool.

I found it on the Libregamewiki

It’s a nice poem, and I’m sure it was fun to write.

The purpose of a license, though, must primarily be to grant license to the recipient. For this purpose, legal robustness, standing diverse tests over time, must surely be of greater value than poetic beauty or entertainment value.

Please, when choosing a license for a work, don’t exacerbate the proliferation of licenses http://www.opensource.org/proliferation

Instead, please choose a widely-studied license known in the community to result in robust grant of freedoms. licensing@fsf.org

Hi Ben,

Point well taken. I would not like to sit on a corporate committee deciding upon such trite things.

However, one advantage of this poem is that it is memorable and thus understandable. I think the spirit of the letter will come through. And as for proliferation, it is hardly different than MIT, ISC, or the thousands of other BSD derivatives.

As lame as the poem may be, I predict it has greater coalising power than any other BSD derivatives and may thus serve to reduce licensing proliferation.

Cheers,
Alex

You are a brilliant poet (and I know your post is a bit old)… but can I ask you to write another verse… to add my requirements to it?

My license as it is at the moment:
This work ‘as-is’ I provide.
No warranty - express or implied.
I’ve done my best,
to debug and test.
Liability for damages denied.

Permission is granted hereby,
to copy, share, but not modify*.
Use as is fit,
free or for profit**.
On this notice these rights rely.

* : You may not claim this to be your own product.

Any direct child or derivative projects must first get my consent. In the
event of my death, or discontinuation of my email address (rlaurie@gmail.com),
the source will be considered public domain.

** : you may not make money from the product directly. You may however, place it on a CD - along with other products - and sell the CD
for a nominal price. This license file must be on the CD and displayed on installation.

Argh… I hate that it sounds so “unpoetic” the last parts… so if you enjoy to write it. See if you can work that into a third verse.

Oh… I’ll gladly insert a copy (or a link) - whatever you require, of your original poetic license.

Reenen: turning this piece into a restrictive license destroys so much of it’s beauty

PS: I just remembered, the (c) construction has no legal value. Instead use the correct unicode symbol © or write out Copyright!

Info on legal value taken from the Wikipedia article on the copyright symbol.