4 ms·

Does anyone know if this will be part of an ongoing series, covering many open source licenses?

by tbirdz 10y ago

3JPLW 10y ago
That would be incredible, but if he spends 4600 words explaining those 171 words, I can't imagine the time investment involved in the GPLv2 (2910), GPLv3 (5644), or MPLv2 (2346).
- tbirdz 10y ago
  Those licenses are very wordy, but not as dense. For example, about a third of the GPLv2 is the preamble that explains the FSF's "four freedoms" of free software philosophy and the ending section after the legal terms that explains how to apply the license to your own product. Cutting those out reduces the GPLv2 to only 2017 words of actual legal text. I also feel like it might be easier to explain a more legalese license like GPLv3, MPLv2 or Apachev2. Like the article explains, the MIT license doesn't use the "language of the law" and uses more common language and language familiar to academics and programmers. A license written with more lawyer-oriented langauge, actually using the same wording as the original laws use, might be much easier for a lawyer like Mr. Mitchell to explain. I'm thinking it's an explicit vs implicit type situation, where even though some licenses are longer they define more things explicity, which means the explanation doesn't have to fill in as many gaps. There are also plenty of simpler licenses that would be great for an explanation. And as part of a series, the author could assume that you are familiar with his MIT license explanation so as to not repeat the same things. Other good candidates I'm thinking would be the BSD licenses, the ISC license, the zlib license, maybe even Apache v2.
- kemitchell 10y ago
  There's definitely an amplification factor at work here. This could DoS my professional and personal lives pretty quick ;-P
kemitchell 10y ago
I'm planning many other posts on open-source topics---I've got it bad---but not any other line-by-lines at the moment. If you're interested in this kind of thing, I _highly_ recommend Meeker's, Rosen's, and St. Laurent's books. St. Laurent's, from O'Reilly, might be my least favorite of those three, but it's the closest to the line-by-line style. Meeker's coverage of GPL issues is second to none. Rosen's the best general introduction. Very approachable. Hits some fundamental concepts.
- tbirdz 10y ago
  Sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing the names of those books?
  - kemitchell 10y ago
    I've added a list, with links, to the end of the blog post.

Does anyone know if this will be part of an ongoing series, covering many open source licenses?

by tbirdz 10y ago

Does anyone know if this will be part of an ongoing series, covering many open source licenses?

3JPLW 10y ago

That would be incredible, but if he spends 4600 words explaining those 171 words, I can't imagine the time investment involved in the GPLv2 (2910), GPLv3 (5644), or MPLv2 (2346).

tbirdz 10y ago
Those licenses are very wordy, but not as dense. For example, about a third of the GPLv2 is the preamble that explains the FSF's "four freedoms" of free software philosophy and the ending section after the legal terms that explains how to apply the license to your own product. Cutting those out reduces the GPLv2 to only 2017 words of actual legal text. I also feel like it might be easier to explain a more legalese license like GPLv3, MPLv2 or Apachev2. Like the article explains, the MIT license doesn't use the "language of the law" and uses more common language and language familiar to academics and programmers. A license written with more lawyer-oriented langauge, actually using the same wording as the original laws use, might be much easier for a lawyer like Mr. Mitchell to explain. I'm thinking it's an explicit vs implicit type situation, where even though some licenses are longer they define more things explicity, which means the explanation doesn't have to fill in as many gaps. There are also plenty of simpler licenses that would be great for an explanation. And as part of a series, the author could assume that you are familiar with his MIT license explanation so as to not repeat the same things. Other good candidates I'm thinking would be the BSD licenses, the ISC license, the zlib license, maybe even Apache v2.
kemitchell 10y ago
There's definitely an amplification factor at work here. This could DoS my professional and personal lives pretty quick ;-P

kemitchell 10y ago

I'm planning many other posts on open-source topics---I've got it bad---but not any other line-by-lines at the moment. If you're interested in this kind of thing, I _highly_ recommend Meeker's, Rosen's, and St. Laurent's books. St. Laurent's, from O'Reilly, might be my least favorite of those three, but it's the closest to the line-by-line style. Meeker's coverage of GPL issues is second to none. Rosen's the best general introduction. Very approachable. Hits some fundamental concepts.

tbirdz 10y ago
Sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing the names of those books?
- kemitchell 10y ago
  I've added a list, with links, to the end of the blog post.