I used to have a very lax view of licensing my projects -- basically, everything was free for you to use and la la la. However, as some people have pointed out, they'd appreciate a more legal license that they can point their lawyers to and say "look, see, I can do what I want with this." I can understand that, so I've now got an official licensing disclaimer, which can be found here:
http://www.aaronballman.com/license.html
I'm using the MIT license, which basically says "use it, but there are no warranties."
The insanely astute may notice that this new license does change the Windows Functionality Suite slightly. It was previously considered public domain which meant there was no licensing to it whatsoever. I'm retracting that and covering it under the MIT license for consistency. So, if you've been using parts of the WFS in your own products, you should switch over to the new licensing scheme (which essentially just means you have to add an entry to your licensing documentation somewhere). However, I have no intentions of hounding on anyone for failure to comply since it was public domain to begin with and so technically, it should remain that way. I guess I see so little difference between then and now that I don't imagine the new scheme causing much of an uproar (but if I'm wrong, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it).
The MIT license covers just about everything you can think of on aaronballman.com in terms of my own content. So any example projects or code snippets you wholesale off my site is covered by it. I don't think it covers any user comments, but IANAL.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns, I'm happy to discuss them. I don't want you to think that this is some sort of major change in policy however. Just to be clear, it's essentially formalizing what my feelings have always been: what I post is posted for free (unless otherwise notes), you are welcome to use it, and there are no warranties that come with it.
Sounds fine to me! I'm using a RB user conference bag today to haul library books and I so badly want some comp sci student to come up to me and rave about how much they love RB! To which I reply, "oh yeah, I'm dating one of the programmers-Aaron" Then they can be amazed and in awe...but so far, it hasn't happened.
LoL! Adorable darling, but highly unlikely. Most REALbasic users don't know me by name anyways since they don't interact with me directly. But if someone is awed by you, let me know. :-)
FREE SHOT !!!!!!!!!!!!
More likely they'd be awed by Lis than they would be by Aaron ....
:)
On a more serious note it does seem odd that you'd have to formalize that just so someone can point a lawyaer at it and say "see". But then I'm not a lawyer so I have no idea what the implications could have been.
Thankfully it's a very simple license and does not require any viral distribution like a GPL license would. I prefer this license as it's very simply "I wrote this and I'm giving it away and you can use it for your suff".
Maybe I should put that on my site as well since it is exactly the right kind of license I intend as well.
Har har har old man. ;-) As for why it's needed -- some companies simply require it. Without proof of some sort of licensing scheme, they consider the code tainted. They want to own their IP or at least know who has claims on what.
Lis, here's my own version of your dream:
My wife so badly wants anybody to come up to her and rave about how she married a smart, rich doctor. To which she replies, “Oops. There was a major flaw in my marriage plans.†Then they can be amazed when she describes what I'm actually like, and the fact that she still married me. ;-)
I suppose that's easy enough it just seemed really plain to me that what you had was freely availabel and could be used how I wanted already.
But with society being a s lititgous as it is I can understand wanting to make sure things are clean.
Shoot the lawyers !
Every time I start trying to rave about RB to someone, they go and say "BASIC?! What are you messing with that for?" Either that or their eyes glaze over. So I usually don't rave about RB in public.
I know you by name, the name would be Man-Meat.
Of course, Lis probably knows you by that name also....
If anyone uses REALbasic seriously, they probably know about Aaron. After all, I just posted a question to the forums and received an insightful response from him in four minutes. It's hard to beat that kind of service, anywhere! Thanks.
Four minutes? Man, my response time sucks lately. ;-) But you're welcome -- always happy to help.
Aaron,
I don't think you can revoke putting something in the Public Domain. Once it's out there, it's out there. However, since PD pretty much means "do with it as you want", you can base products with another license on something that is PD. It's just that if someone takes the PD parts and builds something new with it and sells it for millions, there's nothing you can do about it.
But of course, since you own the Copyright to any new changes you make, nobody can use the changed parts without adhering to your new license.
Just thought I'd clarify this. IANAL.
Cheers,
-- Uli