[S5-discuss] License status?

[Eric A. Meyer]

At 4:05 PM -0500 11/13/06, David Goodger wrote:

>In the case of Docutils, I chose public domain for two reasons: I
>didn't want the headache of choosing a license, and I wanted users to
>have the ability to do anything at all with the code.

    Those are exactly the same reasons I chose to put S5 into the 
public domain, once it was made clear to me that the original 
Creative Commons license I'd picked was inappropriate.  The 
additional reason for me was that the public (in the form of several 
community members) had contributed to the development of S5, so a 
public-domain designation made the most sense.
    It seems to me that a license statement with a MochiKit-flavored 
version of S5 would just say, in effect, "S5 is in the public domain, 
but the MochiKit part is not".  But I'm not a lawyer either.
    Licensing headaches are one of the reasons I avoided adding any 
libraries, frameworks, or other widgets of the MochiKit variety.  It 
made more sense to me to add what was required in original code, and 
no more.  I found it disheartening that I might have to reinvent a 
number of wheels thanks to the minefield that is licensing, but there 
you have it.

>In hindsight,
>there's just as much headache with PD, and the MIT license allows
>plenty of freedom to users.

    True, but no matter what license (or lack thereof) one picks, 
there end up being license-mixing headaches.  I spent quite a bit of 
time looking at a variety of licenses before deciding to hell with 
it, let's just make it completely public.

>The S5 Project should decide what rights to grant and to reserve.

    Agreed.  The original code base, being PD, can be copied into a 
licensed project.  If S5 Project wants to go MIT or GPL or LGPL or 
MPL or full-on copyright, knock yourselves out.  The original base 
will remain PD, and anyone else will be able to fold it into their 
own differently-licensed project if they feel the need.  Just because 
six different efforts use six different licenses, that doesn't lock 
up S5 forever.  The original PD code base exists, and can be extended 
should people wish.

>You already have the ability to distribute MochiKit, since its license
>allows redistribution; you just can't call it PD. MochiKit's copyright
>is held by Bob Ippolito, and only he can set its license. You have to
>include his copyright and license notice in the copy you distribute.
>And including MochiKit doesn't force the rest of S5 to use the same
>license.

    Right.  I think that ends up being the case no matter what license 
you pick.  Even if you fully copyrighted the S5 Project codebase, 
it'd have to say something like "S5 copyright S5 Project; MochiKit 
copyright Bob Ippolito".  Google Earth does that kind of thing all 
the time as it loads models and images and other data held by various 
sources.
    So S5P can stay PD with non-PD additions, or it can choose a 
license for itself.  I'm going to remain largely out of such a 
discussion, since I've obviously chosen in favor of PD for the code I 
and many helpers produced.  Those who build on what we did can make 
their own choices, and I've resolved to be agnostic about those 
choices.

-- 
Eric A. Meyer  (eric at meyerweb.com)
Principal, Complex Spiral Consulting   http://complexspiral.com/
"CSS: The Definitive Guide," "CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference,"
"Eric Meyer on CSS," and more    http://meyerweb.com/eric/books/