Licenses
From POINTS
Contents |
Licenses
Proprietary
This is a group of licenses which are generally written by the legal department of each company. Generally speaking these licenses do nothing to guarantee the functionality of a service or software. Instead, each of these licenses tend to tell you what you can and can't do with the software and do everything possible to reduce their liability.
Open Source
Also roughly categorised as "Copyleft".
General Public License (GPL)
Probably the most famous of the Copyleft licenses. The GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation. The GPL aims to uphold "The four freedoms":
- Freedom 0 - The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- Freedom 1 - The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- Freedom 2 - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
- Freedom 3 - The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
There are actually a few different licenses which all roughly fit into the GPL category including the Lesser General Public License, The Free Document License (which this wiki falls under) etc.
Creative Commons
This refers to a whole group of licenses which revolve around creative works. Images, Music etc. These licenses can be hard to understand as there is a lot of them. Sites have now started using icons to indicate what you can and can't do with particular works. For example, the attribution license allows you to use and broadcast works so long as you attribute the credit to the original author. Being able to derive works from that content is a whole other issue.
There is some really great content under a Creative Commons license. Music for example is great as you can browse through and listen to the music and you can contribute directly to the musician rather than to a recording company.
One of the best comments I've seen about the Creative Commons addressed why people release content under these licenses: "Obscurity is a far worse threat than piracy."
Other Open Source Licences
There are a lot of Open Source Licenses and describing them all here would take forever. Instead, check out this page here.
Other
Freeware:
Isn't really a license at all. The problem being is that it isn't open source and shouldn't be confused with open source software. The problem being that you don't get the opportunity to see exactly what's running on your computer thus freeware is notorious for having spyware or other malicious code included with them.
Public Domain
Public Domain material is where things go when their copyright runs out. Essentially it's a pool of the world's knowledge.
Public Domian is under constant attack.
The time it takes for copyright to run out keeps on getting extended. Some of this may be credited to Mickey Mouse. Everytime "Steamboat Willy", the first film that featured Mickey Mouse, is about to have it's copyright extended, Disney campaign to have the expiration time for copyrights extended. This is because Mickey Mouse would then become public domain. At the moment, in America and Europe, copyright expires 70 years after the original author's death. Free Trade Agreements normally involve the countries taking on the same expiration terms.
Due to this, Public Domain is actually shrinking.
Furthermore, public domain isn't being upheld. There is a lot of material presented as having a copyright. Google are notorious for this. Getting mistakes corrected can be a lengthy process.
Interestingly enough, there was the suggestion of possibly making a Public Domain license under the Creative Commons family of licenses. This seems counter intuitive given that by definition, Public Domain isn't under a license.
There's a great article on the issues here
