6 ms·

A little off topic but does anyone know the purpose of dual licensing MIT and the UNLICENSE? It seems like the second should already allow anyone to do whatever

by arijun 2y ago

A little off topic but does anyone know the purpose of dual licensing MIT and the UNLICENSE? It seems like the second should already allow anyone to do whatever they want…

nsajko 2y ago
The "Unlicense" is not considered as serious.
GolDDranks 2y ago
What I gather about the author's thoughts about that, he isn't a fan of copyright in general, and uses UNLICENSE as an ideological statement, plus a practical way of saying "do whatever you want with this", but also slaps the option to use MIT as "something almost as good" because non-standard licenses deter corporate types, which kind of defeats the original "do whatever you want" purpose of UNLICENSE :D
- globular-toast 2y ago
  That's what I gather from Unlicense too (in fact, this is confirmed in a linked bug thread where the author says he "hates copyright"). I think the author is actually looking for the GPL but doesn't realise it yet. Unlicense can't make something free forever, no matter how hard the author wishes it. GPL can. In other words, Unlicense/MIT is idealistic, GPL is pragmatic. You can't turn off copyright, but you can make it work for the people instead of against them.
  - rahkiin 2y ago
    Not at all. If this library was GPL, any software using it also needs to be GPL. This means all code needs to be open source, which severely limits freedom of makers of end-user software. And almost the whole Rust ecosystem is MIT.
    - richrichardsson 2y ago
      > severely limits freedom of makers of end-user software Ironic for a "free" software license. It would be great if there was a license somewhere inbetween GPL and MIT: you'd be required to upstream (or make available) any changes you made to the parts of other people's code you're making use of, but not required to open your entire codebase.
      - jstarks 2y ago
        I think the MPL attempts to be that license.
      - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
        That's LGPL.
      - agosz 2y ago
        MPL or CDPL
    - globular-toast 2y ago
      > which severely limits freedom of makers of end-user software And thereby severely guarantees the freedom of said end-users. The freedom to deny the freedom of another person is not a freedom worth discussing. The author expressly dislikes copyright. GPL is still the only real cure to copyright. "Permissive" licences are corporate friendly. They allow corporations to take what they want and give back nothing. In this day and age it's more important than ever to empower individuals and limit the growth of corporations/oligopolies.
      - bigstrat2003 2y ago
        > The freedom to deny the freedom of another person is not a freedom worth discussing. Nobody denies anyone anything. If $corp never makes a piece of software, the users never had rights to begin with. If $corp makes it but doesn't open source the software, the users still never had rights to begin with. It is not "denying people freedom" to exercise one's right to make software which is not open source. > They allow corporations to take what they want and give back nothing. This is, and has always been, a very weak argument. When a developer makes a public gift of their software, it is very churlish indeed to complain when someone makes use of that gift. It's also pretty hypocritical, unless you're going to make the same complaint about individuals using open source software and not giving back.
nindalf 2y ago
Burntsushi has written many important crates in the Rust ecosystem. He started with licensing under Unlicense exclusively, until people requested a dual license with MIT. See this issue from 2016 for more details - https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder/issues/26 https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder/issues/26 Almost all of the Rust ecosystem is dual licensed under MIT/Apache 2.0, so this combination is a bit unusual. But the presence of MIT means that it hasn’t been a problem in practice.
Xylakant 2y ago
The unlicense is considered problematic in various jurisdictions, among them Germany - under German law, you cannot relinquish certain rights that are associated with the author at all. Dedicating something to the public domain is not a valid concept here. This means the whole license could be declared invalid in court. Other jurisdictions may be similarly problematic- thus the fallback to MIT There’s a stackoverflow post that discusses some of the issues https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-is-wrong-with-the-unlicense#147120 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1471...
- chrismorgan 2y ago
  My own summary and collection of information about the problems with the Unlicense: https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ (I collected that mostly because I didn’t find all the relevant information in one place, or explanation of the reasonable alternatives.)
  - Xylakant 2y ago
    That looks like a pretty comprehensive overview. I'll bookmark this for further reference :)
  - treeshateorcs 2y ago
    i love your site!!
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Never understood why anyone uses this one; it's just too potentially messy, and a permissive license like 0BSD provides the intended effect without the risk.
  - burntsushi 2y ago
    I wrote down why I do it years ago: https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_licensing-and-copyleft.md https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_l... You may not agree with me, which is fine, but you should now understand.
goodpoint 2y ago
Should have used GPL or at least LGPL

by arijun 2y ago

A little off topic but does anyone know the purpose of dual licensing MIT and the UNLICENSE? It seems like the second should already allow anyone to do whatever they want…

nsajko 2y ago

The "Unlicense" is not considered as serious.

GolDDranks 2y ago

What I gather about the author's thoughts about that, he isn't a fan of copyright in general, and uses UNLICENSE as an ideological statement, plus a practical way of saying "do whatever you want with this", but also slaps the option to use MIT as "something almost as good" because non-standard licenses deter corporate types, which kind of defeats the original "do whatever you want" purpose of UNLICENSE :D

globular-toast 2y ago
That's what I gather from Unlicense too (in fact, this is confirmed in a linked bug thread where the author says he "hates copyright"). I think the author is actually looking for the GPL but doesn't realise it yet. Unlicense can't make something free forever, no matter how hard the author wishes it. GPL can. In other words, Unlicense/MIT is idealistic, GPL is pragmatic. You can't turn off copyright, but you can make it work for the people instead of against them.
- rahkiin 2y ago
  Not at all. If this library was GPL, any software using it also needs to be GPL. This means all code needs to be open source, which severely limits freedom of makers of end-user software. And almost the whole Rust ecosystem is MIT.
  - richrichardsson 2y ago
    > severely limits freedom of makers of end-user software Ironic for a "free" software license. It would be great if there was a license somewhere inbetween GPL and MIT: you'd be required to upstream (or make available) any changes you made to the parts of other people's code you're making use of, but not required to open your entire codebase.
    - jstarks 2y ago
      I think the MPL attempts to be that license.
    - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
      That's LGPL.
    - agosz 2y ago
      MPL or CDPL
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    > which severely limits freedom of makers of end-user software And thereby severely guarantees the freedom of said end-users. The freedom to deny the freedom of another person is not a freedom worth discussing. The author expressly dislikes copyright. GPL is still the only real cure to copyright. "Permissive" licences are corporate friendly. They allow corporations to take what they want and give back nothing. In this day and age it's more important than ever to empower individuals and limit the growth of corporations/oligopolies.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      > The freedom to deny the freedom of another person is not a freedom worth discussing. Nobody denies anyone anything. If $corp never makes a piece of software, the users never had rights to begin with. If $corp makes it but doesn't open source the software, the users still never had rights to begin with. It is not "denying people freedom" to exercise one's right to make software which is not open source. > They allow corporations to take what they want and give back nothing. This is, and has always been, a very weak argument. When a developer makes a public gift of their software, it is very churlish indeed to complain when someone makes use of that gift. It's also pretty hypocritical, unless you're going to make the same complaint about individuals using open source software and not giving back.

nindalf 2y ago

Burntsushi has written many important crates in the Rust ecosystem. He started with licensing under Unlicense exclusively, until people requested a dual license with MIT. See this issue from 2016 for more details - https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder/issues/26 https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder/issues/26 Almost all of the Rust ecosystem is dual licensed under MIT/Apache 2.0, so this combination is a bit unusual. But the presence of MIT means that it hasn’t been a problem in practice.

Xylakant 2y ago

The unlicense is considered problematic in various jurisdictions, among them Germany - under German law, you cannot relinquish certain rights that are associated with the author at all. Dedicating something to the public domain is not a valid concept here. This means the whole license could be declared invalid in court. Other jurisdictions may be similarly problematic- thus the fallback to MIT There’s a stackoverflow post that discusses some of the issues https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-is-wrong-with-the-unlicense#147120 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1471...

chrismorgan 2y ago
My own summary and collection of information about the problems with the Unlicense: https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ (I collected that mostly because I didn’t find all the relevant information in one place, or explanation of the reasonable alternatives.)
- Xylakant 2y ago
  That looks like a pretty comprehensive overview. I'll bookmark this for further reference :)
- treeshateorcs 2y ago
  i love your site!!
rsynnott 2y ago
Never understood why anyone uses this one; it's just too potentially messy, and a permissive license like 0BSD provides the intended effect without the risk.
- burntsushi 2y ago
  I wrote down why I do it years ago: https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_licensing-and-copyleft.md https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_l... You may not agree with me, which is fine, but you should now understand.

goodpoint 2y ago

Should have used GPL or at least LGPL