

Why I Unlicense - kiba
http://kibabase.com/articles/why-i-unlicense

======
arto
As one of the original authors of the Unlicense, always nice to see yet more
people opt out of the copyright racket.

The growing visibility of unlicensing is a good thing what with the copyright
industry increasingly running amok. Sometimes things have to get worse before
they can get better.

The project list at <http://unlicense.org/> could probably use an update
sometime soon. Link suggestions are welcome via the mailing list as usual.

------
bhickey
I've used Unlicense before, but I have since been persuaded that this was a
mistake. Frankly, I think that unlicense inadequately protects user freedom.
It does not contain a patent grant or estoppel. While I don't care about
attribution, the disruption of provenance is problematic. I should hope that
there are few companies interested in shipping code that, as far as they can
tell, fell off the back of a truck.

Suppose that Foo Corp releases Unlicensed code that includes patented
material. Baz Ltd goes on to develop a widget that uses Foo's code. Later on,
Bar Inc buys Foo Corp and files suit against Baz.

No disrespect meant to Arto, but he simply isn't a intellectual property
attorney. (Edit: And neither am I.)

~~~
kiba
_While I don't care about attribution, the disruption of provenance is
problematic._

Heard that loudly and clearly several time in this thread.

 _Suppose that Foo Corp releases Unlicensed code that includes patented
material. Baz Ltd goes on to develop a widget that uses Foo's code. Later on,
Bar Inc buys Foo Corp and files suit against Baz._

Good point. The problem only exists because patent exists.

~~~
clarkevans
The point is that copyright dedications are not licenses. Therefore, if you
want to submarine someone... do a copyright dedication (but don't grant patent
rights). Wait till your "public domain" work is broadly adopted, then sue. Or,
conversely, if you want to get sued... use works in the public domain where
the person doing the dedication hasn't also granted patent license.

At least if you use a standard MIT license there may be an "equitable estoppel
through acquiescence" in which the copyright holder might not be able to sue
you for patent infringement since the MIT license said you could _use_ the
work.

~~~
icebraining
It's better to use the Apache 2.0 license which includes a patent grant,
though.

------
PaulHoule
Why not CC-BY? I see attribution is something that protects the rights of
consumers (by preserving the provenance chain) as much as it protects the
rights of producers.

Personally I find myself going the other way. I see many free data products in
the semantic web space that are only marginally succeeding, and a lot of it is
that, without the profit motive, the people involved don't have a motivation
to do the fit-and-finish work that's necessary for people to pick the product
up and actually use it. I'd rather be working with a few people who really
want the product and prove that they want it by paying for it, rather than
dealing with a huge number of uncommitted people.

~~~
kiba
_Why not CC-BY? I see attribution is something that protects the rights of
consumers (by preserving the provenance chain) as much as it protects the
rights of producers._

I want my work to spread as widely as possible. Sometime when your work get
remixed so much that it doesn't make sense that somebody should preserve
attribution.

 _Personally I find myself going the other way. I see many free data products
in the semantic web space that are only marginally succeeding, and a lot of it
is that, without the profit motive, the people involved don't have a
motivation to do the fit-and-finish work that's necessary for people to pick
the product up and actually use it. I'd rather be working with a few people
who really want the product and prove that they want it by paying for it,
rather than dealing with a huge number of uncommitted people._

You still want more dedicated customers. The way to get a lot of those people
is to be well known. Whether or not you are able to filter them is another
matter.

This article isn't arguing against high price. To me, getting paid for dead
tree copies of your book is the very definition of charging a leg and an arm
because they COULD read it for free on the internet.

------
sambeau
I don't understand this bit: _Under both system of copyright and copyfree
work, J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series of book, became a
billionaire_

JK Rowling became a billionaire through licensing her characters to film-
makers, toy-makers, etc. a method that is totally dependent on intellectual
property.

Am I missing something?

~~~
kiba
Thanks for spotting an error. What I really meant is that J. K. Rowling would
probably earn a lot of money either way, even if not with such ludicrous rent.
I updated the text to reflect what I actually mean.

------
donut
Sounds like "The Free Music Philosophy":
<http://ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html>

------
meanguy
Different types of creative work may deserve a different treatment. (The same
people who want copyright protection reduced to 5 years max probably haven't
thought through the GPL implications!)

Imagine you wrote a truly great short story. Straight up copyright might be
optimal. It'll get copied around regardless. Encouraging derivative works
probably doesn't buy you much. And CC-BY seems as low as you'd want to go.
Anything less, and Hollywood just gobbles it up and nobody sees your name on
the poster. This goes against your strategy of "getting known by getting
copied."

Also, times change. Musicians who license songs CC-BY-NC are free options in
the Vimeo music service that offers background tracks to video creators.
Meanwhile, old-school artists are one click away from actually getting paid.
And public domain music seems deeply buried in the archive.org ghetto. So
choose carefully, grasshopper.

License choice is part of modern web marketing. But it's a short-term bump and
nobody knows the long-term effects. Also: if the most interesting part of your
art is the license, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
kiba
Good points. I should addresses some of these concern in the future.

However, people tend to attribute you anyway, 99% of the time, in my
experience. I got one guy who published a book on amazon and he attributed my
work anyway, even though it was copyrighted to the max. One guy just
attributed the author, but not the zine. I didn't find anybody who doesn't
attribute my content in some way, at least not yet.

The other reasons why I make my stuff public domain is that I want to maximize
the usefulness of my work as well ethical reasons. However, these are not
explored in the article. Maybe I shouldn't have neglect those dimensions, but
I am not quite sure yet.

~~~
arto
Indeed. Those who are going to attribute you will attribute you anyway,
without needing a gun held to their head about it. Those who won't, won't.

Many of these concerns are addressed in Peter Saint-Andre's essay "Who's
Afraid of the Public Domain?":

<http://stpeter.im/writings/essays/publicdomain.html>

------
geoffhill
I've always contemplated doing this, but as I understand it, public domain
isn't recognized internationally, and therefore anything you release to the
public domain can later be copyrighted by someone else in those non-
recognizing regions. Can anyone who is more well-informed weigh in on this?

~~~
naner
Public domain is ambiguous in some countries:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/219742/open-source-why-
no...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/219742/open-source-why-not-release-
into-public-domain)

There are ways to work around this such as what SQLite does (public domain +
explicit license to anyone who asks): <http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html>

and CC0: <http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/>

~~~
clarkevans
The CC0 is currently under an license-review discussion at the OSI. The CC0
explicitly excludes patent rights from the permission and therefore may not be
a great choice for a free software license.

------
icebraining
_However, to gain a reputation so that one would be able to earn a living is
the conundrum that every entertainment entrepreneur must face.

One person who solved this conundrum is the author behind The Alchemist, Paulo
Coelho. _

I don't get it. Paulo Coelho was already well known in '99. Two of his books
were already bestsellers in Brazil and "in 1993, HarperCollins published
50,000 copies of the book, which was the largest ever initial print run of a
Brazilian book in the United States."

Like Jason Rohrer, he gained his reputation before starting to distribute his
novels for free.

~~~
kiba
Jason Rohrer gains his reputation through previous works, just like the author
behind The Alchemist.

------
dmm
Why not just use the shorter, largely-equivalent and already used ISC license
rather than creating yet another one?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license>

~~~
kiba
Two reasons: the ISC license isn't public domain and I didn't create the
Unlicense.

