License information
Last updated 20 July 2023
In addition to software user freedom, I also strongly believe in
free culture and that all creative works everywhere should be
free. Here are some resources on free software, culture, and
licenses:
- What is Free Software?[1]
- Various Licenses and Comments about Them[2]
- Proprietary Software Is Often Malware[3]
- What Is Free Culture?[4]
- Definition of Free Cultural Works[5]
Based on these philosophies, my general tendency is to release
software under strong copyleft licenses such as GNU GPL[6] and
GNU AGPL[7] so as to help ensure it will remain forever free, and
to dedicate my non-software works to the public domain wherever
and whenever possible. Accordingly, you will see various works
here on my site carry one of several licenses/notices, laid out
below:
GNU GPLv3+
----------
More verbosely, "Version 3 of the GPL or any later version"[8].
For a page and/or work on my site marked with a notice like
"This work is licensed under GNU GPLv3+" you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.
A copy of the GNU GPLv3 is available on the site as
COPYING.GPL[9]. You can also get a copy from the GNU project's
website[6]. Related reading for the interested reader:
Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses[10].
GNU AGPLv3+
-----------
More verbosely, "Version 3 of the AGPL or any later version"[8].
For a page and/or work on my site marked with a notice like
"This work is licensed under GNU AGPLv3+" you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either
version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
A copy of the GNU AGPLv3 is available on the site as
COPYING.AGPL[11]. You can also get a copy from the GNU project's
website[7]. Related reading for the interested reader:
Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses[10].
CC0 1.0 Universal
-----------------
The "No Rights Reserved" tool in the Creative Commons toolbox of
licenses/deeds, CC0[12] is a tool that helps the affirmer (the
person associating CC0 with a work) dedicate the work to the
public domain by waiving their copyright and related or
neighbouring rights to the work to the fullest extent permitted by
law. If the waiver is ineffective under applicable law, then CC0
acts as a fallback license from the affirmer that grants the
public a royalty-free, non transferable, non sublicensable, non
exclusive, irrevocable and unconditional license to use the work
for any purpose.
For a page and/or work on my site marked with a notice like
"This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal" I relinquish my
copyright and related or neighbouring rights to that work and
dedicate it to the public domain per the CC0 deed.
A copy of CC0 1.0 Universal is available on this site as
COPYING.CC0[13], as well from the Creative Commons website[14].
Note: external links to archived copies, courtesy of the Internet
Archive's Wayback Machine[15].
CC BY-SA 4.0
------------
More verbosely, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International[16]. For a page and/or work on my site marked with
a notice like "This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0" you can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, explained on the license
deed page linked above. In short, you must give proper credit,
and if you modify and/or build upon the material then you must
distribute your changes under the same license as the original.
A copy of CC BY-SA 4.0 is available on this site as
COPYING.CC-BY-SA[17], as well from the Creative Commons
website[18].
Note: external links to archived copies, courtesy of the Internet
Archive's Wayback Machine[15].
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
[3] https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.html
[4] https://questioncopyright.org/what_is_free_culture
[5] https://freedomdefined.org/Definition
[6] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
[7] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
[8] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#VersionThreeOrLater
[9] https://kelar.org/~bandali/COPYING.GPL
gopher://kelar.org/0/~bandali/COPYING.GPL
[10] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
[11] https://kelar.org/~bandali/COPYING.AGPL
gopher://kelar.org/0/~bandali/COPYING.AGPL
[12] https://web.archive.org/web/20211217090229/https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
[13] https://kelar.org/~bandali/COPYING.CC0
gopher://kelar.org/0/~bandali/COPYING.CC0
[14] https://web.archive.org/web/20211101132443/https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.txt
[15] https://web.archive.org
[16] https://web.archive.org/web/20211217154924/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
[17] https://kelar.org/~bandali/COPYING.CC-BY-SA
gopher://kelar.org/0/~bandali/COPYING.CC-BY-SA
[18] https://web.archive.org/web/20211119031220/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.txt
This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal and is dedicated to the
public domain.