Timeline for A New Code License: The MIT, this time with Attribution Required
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
30 events
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| Jan 18, 2021 at 12:11 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 13:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Mar 20, 2017 at 10:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Jan 28, 2016 at 4:27 | comment | added | Shog9 | As far as SE the company, our needs are met by literally any public license, or no public license at all - as long as the terms of service grant us a license, we're golden; just look at the terms you agree to when you post anything on any of the social media services... But that's short-sighted and selfish; we're doing this to make programming better, not just to line our own pockets. And for that purpose, a good public license is all but essential, @OleksandrR. BTW, you may like this discussion: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/273277/… | |
| Jan 28, 2016 at 0:42 | comment | added | Oleksandr R. | @Shog9 I understand. I just think that this sort of reuse is beyond the scope of SE's responsibility to the community. People have, in general, no rights whatsoever in code they find on the Internet, and should not be using it at all except in accord with whatever licence they have been granted. We both know that a lot don't care and you can't do much about them. But, by emphasizing that everyone can choose their own licence, you could help people understand that this is something for them to decide, and not a problem StackExchange can "just solve". CC-BY-SA is enough for SE's own needs. | |
| Jan 28, 2016 at 0:20 | comment | added | Shog9 | We should probably break this discussion out into a separate Q&A, @OleksandrR. That said, I didn't mean to imply 4.0 wouldn't be an improvement here; merely that it wouldn't really go very far toward addressing the problems that folks have had with 3.0. To be clear, CC-BY-SA is a really nice license... For prose, for collaborative works, and even for code that is intended to supplement informational publications. And those are all critical aspects of what SO/SE is about. It's just not all that great a license for code you'd expect to use verbatim in a larger project. | |
| Jan 28, 2016 at 0:17 | comment | added | Oleksandr R. | @Shog9 it wasn't me who chose CC-BY-SA as the licence for StackExchange, was it? I know it wasn't you either, but now we're stuck with it. You can improve matters by at least changing the licence to one (4.0) that doesn't explicitly assume the licensed work is artistic in nature. The other two situations you raise are not ambiguous, by my reading: they are simply not allowed under CC-BY-SA, and everyone ought to know it. After this discussion it seems that the only thing people will agree to is choosing their own licence, but if so you can still try to convince them to pick CC0 (or whatever). | |
| Jan 28, 2016 at 0:04 | comment | added | Shog9 | Of course, everyone would complain about it @OleksandrR. CC-BY-SA 4.0 isn't magic. More specifically, it's still not a code license. It resolves some of the big problems inherent in taking CC-licensed code and using it in (for example) a GPL project, but does nothing for the ambiguity of using it in a closed-source project, or even an open-source project with an incompatible license. Note that there are currently only two non-CC licenses deemed compatible with CC-BY-SA 4.0 - that leaves an awful lot of open source out in the cold. | |
| Jan 27, 2016 at 23:25 | comment | added | Oleksandr R. | My suggestion: change CC-BY-SA 3.0 to 4.0, which resolves textual ambiguities regarding its application to code, but is otherwise morally the same. Reassure people that this is really, genuinely the same as it always has been, and actually pretty restrictive--compatible with the very rigid GPL 3. This should satisfy copyleft advocates. And then tell them that, if they want, they can specify their own licence(s) (maybe make a field for it in the profile) offering as permissive terms as they wish. That should placate the public-domainers. Nobody would reasonably be able to complain about this. | |
| Jan 18, 2016 at 18:28 | comment | added | Jesse W at Z - Given up on SE | @Shog9 -- the problem is, because a distinction between code and non-code, in this context, is very difficult and unclear (IMO), licensing "code" under a non-copyleft license will bleed over to offering everything under such a license, which undermines a lot of (my, and I suspect others) willingness to contribute it. | |
| Jan 16, 2016 at 0:56 | comment | added | Shog9 | No offense, @Ixrec, but... you're kinda new here. Why would you be aware of that? Start at the beginning, follow the "linked" sidebar down the rabbit hole. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 23:48 | comment | added | Ixrec | I was completely unaware that "folks have been complaining about it for years", and most of the people I've talked to about these proposals in chat also don't seem to be aware of that. So it seems like the whole idea of changing SE's license came out of nowhere without any real justification. I'm still waiting for a follow up post that makes some attempt to convince me there's even a real problem here in need of solving. Until then, the only opinion I can reasonably support is that changing the license for no apparent reason is a really bad idea, no matter what that change is. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 20:35 | comment | added | Jaydles Staff | @Mgetz, this does nothing to change what "fair use" is (or isn't). If code fell under fair use for CC-SA, it's still fair use under MIT, or anything else. "Fair use" is a literally a case where a license or grant of rights is not required, so WHICH license might be if it weren't fair use is moot. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 20:32 | comment | added | Mgetz | @Jaydles the short answer is the legal liability of non-fair use using of code from Stackoverflow would dramatically outweigh the benefits of asking questions here. Given that at the current state all code snippet use is de-facto fair use, that has not been a problem. But trying to convince a legal department to allow you to use a 5 line snippet from some site on the internet isn't going to happen. They are going to tell you to figure it out yourself and have IT block SO at the firewall. At the end of the day legal departments are not sane. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 16:50 | comment | added | Shog9 | I'm not blaming the users, @TravisJ - I'm blaming me, us: when you've been talking about something weekly for months it gets hard to remember who you've talked to and who you haven't. Hence this answer - I'm trying to clarify and dump some of the things that've been tossed around in our internal conversations but don't seem to have made it into the public dialog. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 16:46 | comment | added | Travis J | "There's been one previous post, and both that and this kinda make it sound like a done deal and not checkpoints on a long road toward solving a difficult problem." I think what made it sound like a done deal was when the previous post said this will be in effect by January 1st. It is rather hypocritical to blame the users for a failure to communicate. Even this current post has an air of urgency, noting an upcoming change written in stone for March 1st. If these really are just "checkpoints", then call them that and let everyone retain at least some of their dwindling sanity. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 16:38 | comment | added | Jaydles Staff | @Mgetz, why would (the fairly narrow) legal idea of "fair use" be the only way code shared here (or anywhere) is usable? It's just ONE way. Lots of code is too short or functional to be covered by copyright at all. Other code is explicitly licensed for use by others (whether by CC-SA or some other license). Even if "fair use" does apply to code use, it's only one of the ways someone can legally use someone else's work. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 12:39 | comment | added | Mgetz | @Shog9 the sad part is without fair use, then any code found on SO is unusable, regardless of license. This proposal makes it even more unusable because of the license split. To me this proposal is a death knell for SO. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 1:54 | comment | added | Zizouz212 | @JesseWatZ Quite honestly, I doubt anyone follows that. No one copies code directly. Do we even need things to be copyleft? Probably not - people who work on the job just want help, and they should have some sort of freedom in that. Beside, the copyleft suspects are generally the GPL. Eww... (Disclaimer: I have an unknown tendency to absolutely hate, with a passion, anything that contains the letters G, P, and L, especially when they are right beside each other, or come after an L, or an A. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 1:49 | comment | added | Shog9 | And how is that a problem, @Jesse? D'you think folks are commonly sharing the codebases they use code from SO in now? Is that even an expectation we're setting, or have ever set? A rule that everyone breaks is worse than no rule at all. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 1:14 | comment | added | Jesse W at Z - Given up on SE | The basic problem is that the current license is Share Alike (i.e. Copyleft), and the proposed licenses are NOT. | |
| Jan 15, 2016 at 0:08 | comment | added | Shog9 | Well, we can't actually declare anything "fair use", @Mgetz; that's something that has to be decided in court, if the concept even exists in your country. Aside: mourn the TPPA. | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 23:44 | comment | added | Zizouz212 | @Mgetz Because I don't want someone to sue me if my code breaks their system. Fair Use is not a defined term, and would make for a worse situation than the status quo. | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 23:26 | comment | added | Mgetz | why don't we all just agree that given the size and scope of posts on SO that they are all FAIR USE and that by posting it you agree that anyone using any code posted here is indeed fair use. | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 22:56 | comment | added | Shog9 | I was clearly referring to durians, @abby. Which are, in fact, forbidden in some places with good cause. | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 22:52 | history | edited | hairboatStaff | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
a rose by any other name would smell as sweaty
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| Jan 14, 2016 at 22:50 | history | edited | Shog9 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
duplicate words bother me too much
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| Jan 14, 2016 at 22:48 | comment | added | Zizouz212 | ... All I want is to make sure that no one can come up to me if something of mine screwed something on there side. Aside from that, I don't care about people who don't attribute me: chances are, they have no moral sanity, and I will appreciate the people who do, and help me out. As it is, I'm 16, I share what I know with a good heart, and in a well-spirited manner, and at the end of the day, knowing that I was able to help someone out makes my day. | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 22:45 | comment | added | Zizouz212 | Good point: Licensing does not prevent careless or malicious use. I'm surprised about how many people are thinking that this license will let them steal their code, because it's already happening right now. I don't want to sound pessimistic, but when thousands of people break a license/law/contract, it's a bit of a lost cause. You're not significantly damaged in a direct way, so honestly, let it go... | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 22:40 | history | answered | Shog9 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |