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Also, Steve, would you consider using the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 license instead of a homemade license? I believe the CC BY-ND conveys most*

by dewitt 14y ago

Also, Steve, would you consider using the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 license instead of a homemade license? I believe the CC BY-ND conveys most* of the same things you intended with your license, but it has the advantage of being pre-vetted by layers everywhere and the CC terms are very well understood (thus encouraging reuse in the ways you want, and ostensibly easier to enforce for the things you don't). See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ I say "most", because you also included the "so long as you do not charge anything for it" phrase in your license. Personally I'm not convinced that matters much in practice, as who is going to be able to charge for something you are giving away for free (and if they do, it'll be on a small scale, and do you really care?), and it's notoriously difficult to define things like commercial use, but if you feel strongly there's always the Non-Commercial variant: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Thanks! Reference: http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/license.html http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/license.html

stevelosh 14y ago
I used the one I did because it's the one Zed used for his books (at least that's what it was when I started this one) and since the book is heavily influenced by his I wanted to stay in the spirit of Learn X the Hard Way. If this were software I'd probably use a more structured license, but since it's just a book I think this is fine. Worst case: someone doesn't redistribute it because it's not a CC license. Well... they can still read it online...
zedshaw 14y ago
The only time I've ever had someone complain about the "you can't make money" part of the sentence is when they're trying to run a con. Usually this involves some scheme to chop up my book and sell it on Amazon or put it up somewhere else and put ads on it. The problem with this is then the author is left with mounting support costs for all these copies sold since buyers can't tell the difference between the copies I wrote and the copies the con artist sells. They buy it then email me when they get stuck, so I'm left spending my time making somebody else money. Anyway, I have a whole rant on how the CC licenses try to do to copyrighted art what the GPL/BSD does to software and how it just doesn't work the same.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Flimm 14y ago
  Link to said rant? I'm interested in this, having a group of lawyers write a common legal text seems like a good thing to me, for both software and art.

by dewitt 14y ago

stevelosh 14y ago

I used the one I did because it's the one Zed used for his books (at least that's what it was when I started this one) and since the book is heavily influenced by his I wanted to stay in the spirit of Learn X the Hard Way. If this were software I'd probably use a more structured license, but since it's just a book I think this is fine. Worst case: someone doesn't redistribute it because it's not a CC license. Well... they can still read it online...

zedshaw 14y ago

The only time I've ever had someone complain about the "you can't make money" part of the sentence is when they're trying to run a con. Usually this involves some scheme to chop up my book and sell it on Amazon or put it up somewhere else and put ads on it. The problem with this is then the author is left with mounting support costs for all these copies sold since buyers can't tell the difference between the copies I wrote and the copies the con artist sells. They buy it then email me when they get stuck, so I'm left spending my time making somebody else money. Anyway, I have a whole rant on how the CC licenses try to do to copyrighted art what the GPL/BSD does to software and how it just doesn't work the same.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Flimm 14y ago
Link to said rant? I'm interested in this, having a group of lawyers write a common legal text seems like a good thing to me, for both software and art.