[MinGW-dvlpr] Re: Mingw32 Win32 API headers project license

[<mar...@ya...>]

Hi,

The requirement to include the copyright notice with
binary-only distributions could be removed, just
requiring the copyright notice with source
distributions; a lot of BSD-style licenses do that
(e.g. zlib license).

The license which ReWind uses (often called the
MIT/X11 license) is a possibility:
________________________________

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any
person obtaining a copy of this software and
associated documentation files (the "Software"), to
deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify,
merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom
the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the
following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice
shall be included in all copies or substantial
portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF
ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO
EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE
USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
____________________________

The latter seems reasonable, as credit must be given
if substantial portions of the software are used (e.g.
in another Win32 API implementation), but applications
built with w32api wouldn't use a substantial portion
of the software (only including a handful of function
declarations and data structures) so binaries built
with Mingw would not need to include the copyright
notice if this license were used.

As you say though, public domain might make more
sense, something akin to the Allegro developers'
"Gift-ware" license perhaps (rewriting it somewhat to
refer to Mingw and w32api rather than Allegro and
games)?

___________________________

Allegro is gift-ware. It was created by a number of
people working in cooperation, and is given to you
freely as a gift. You may use, modify, redistribute,
and generally hack it about in any way you like, and
you do not have to give us anything in return. 
However, if you like this product you are encouraged
to thank us by making a return gift to the Allegro
community. This could be by writing an add-on package,
providing a useful bug report, making an improvement
to the library, or perhaps just releasing the sources
of your program so that other people can learn from
them. If you redistribute parts of this code or make a
game using it, it would be nice if you mentioned
Allegro somewhere in the credits, but you are not
required to do this. We trust you not to abuse our
generosity. 
___________________________

and their disclaimer:
___________________________

#include <std_disclaimer.h> 

"I do not accept responsibility for any effects,
adverse or otherwise, that this code may have on you,
your computer, your sanity, your dog, and anything
else that you can think of. Use it at your own risk." 
___________________________

Well, the disclaimer probably needs to be a bit more
formal :-) ; the disclaimer from the MIT/X11 license
could be used for example.

Regards,
Mark


 --- Anders Norlander <ano...@te...> wrote: >
(Sorry about that, accidentally to pressed the send
> button.
> Here's the full message)
> 
> Perhaps a BSD-style license isn't appropriate,
> considering that it
> mainly demands that a copyright notice is retained
> whether distribution
> is in binary or source form. Conditions from BSD
> license:
>      1. Redistributions of source code must retain
> the above
>         copyright notice, this list of conditions
> and the following
>         disclaimer.
>      2. Redistributions in binary form must
> reproduce the above
>         copyright notice, this list of conditions
> and the
>         following disclaimer in the documentation
> and/or other materials
>         provided with the distribution.
>      3. The name of the author may not be used to
> endorse or
>         promote products derived from this software
> without specific
>         prior written permission.
> 
> There is no copyright holder and no specific author,
> if
> anyone has a copyright it is microsoft. The only
> copyright
> notices in the headers are in the socket related
> headers:
>   Portions Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1988, 1993
>   The Regents of the University of California.  All
> rights reserved.
> 
>   Portions Copyright (c) 1993 by Digital Equipment
> Corporation.
> 
> So perhaps simply making it public domain is the
> best
> solution, since it is a mere reproduction of the
> headers and import libs from the MS platform SDK,
> with the exception of some short library routines
> and the screen saver code (which already has a
> public
> domain notice).
> 
> Still of course, we could put some notice that it
> would be appreciated if improvements/additions are
> contributed back to other users (i.e mingw since
> you seem to do the maintaining), which I suppose is
> the interest of most users of mingw/cygwin/etc to
> do.
> And a disclaimer of non-warranty etc.
> 
> Opinions?
> 
> Best regards,
> Anders
> 



	
	
		
___________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Free modem offer, sign up online today and save £80 http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk