open source copyright language

[MBR]

It depends on your goal.  There are lots to choose from.

Samuel Baldwin <recursive.forest-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> suggested the MIT/X 
Consortium license, as being pretty close to putting it in the public 
domain.  But do you consider public domain to be "open and out there in 
true freedom software fashion"?  With such a license, anyone can take 
your code, modify it to suit their purposes, and then distribute their 
resulting binaries with no requirement that they distribute the source 
code.  That happened with parts of the X Window System.  Companies would 
modify the X Server to work with their hardware, and for that piece of X 
they'd only provide binaries.

If you believe that being "open and out there in true freedom software 
fashion" means that those you've released your work to in an open 
fashion shouldn't be allowed to benefit by claiming proprietary rights 
to the result of them building on your work, public domain is not what 
you want.  The GPL is designed to make sure they treat others as 
generously as you've treated them.  See 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html.

    Mark Rosenthal



Stephen Adler wrote:
> Thanks guys,
>
> In order to help me narrow my search, I just want to mention that the 
> work is done under contract for the US government for the department of 
> health and human services. I'm not sure how this would affect the 
> selection of the copyright. Basically, the code is paid for out of your 
> tax dollars.... It should be open and out there in true freedom software 
> fashion.
>
> Cheers. Steve.
>
> Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
>   
>>> What's the appropriate open source copyright language that one would put 
>>> at the top of a source file?
>>>     
>>>       
>> There are many to choose from:
>>
>> http://www.opensource.org/licenses
>>
>> -b
>>
>> --
>> it is important to use your hands; this is what distinguishes you from a
>> cow or a computer operator.                                  <paul rand>
>>
>>   
>>     
>
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