<div dir="ltr"><div>Thanks for your help, everyone!<br></div>It sounds like leaving my open-source projects licensed MIT (probably) protects them from retroactive ownership by a vaguely-worded contract.<br><div><br>Just as a disclaimer for all past, present, future replies:<br>
No information from this thread shall be construed as legal advice; I'm
seeking to understand the <b>opinions</b> on what the law appears to be.<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Rogan Creswick <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:creswick@gmail.com" target="_blank">creswick@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Mateusz Kowalczyk <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:fuuzetsu@fuuzetsu.co.uk" target="_blank">fuuzetsu@fuuzetsu.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>I'm also not a lawyer.</div><div class="im">
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">So overall, I think you're safe publishing under whatever license suits</span><br></div>
you and it's up to the programmer using your code to decide whether or<br>
not they want to build and/or distribute it as-is.</blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>I can't comment on the legality of this; it sounds like it may be correct in a technical sense, but in any case, I would like to plead that you /do not do this/, for one reason:</div>
<div><br></div><div>Someone may want to use your project (and, transitively, the dependencies you rely on) in a binary distribution someday, and it's unlikely that they will think to check all the licenses all the way down.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Granted, that *is* their responsibility, but I think it's irresponsible to create a product that "silently" causes a license violation based on how the compiled result is used.</div><div>
<br></div><div>Please make a good faith effort to keep your software license compatible with the licenses on your dependencies.</div><div><br></div><div>This is just my perspective on the question, and not something I'm interested in debating, but I wanted to put it out there since it will impact the usability of your software in some situations.</div>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div><br></div><div>--Rogan</div></font></span><div><div class="h5"><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
> Does making a project "PublicDomain" only refer to the code contained in<br>
> that project, or would it (unintentionally and unlawfully) give<br>
> distributors of that source code the freedom to not include the BSD3/MIT<br>
> license files from dependencies?<br>
<br>
</div>Making your code public domain would not affect the dependencies at all,<br>
after all, someone can come later, take half of your code and use it for<br>
something totally different.<br>
<div><br>
> Essentially my goal is to waive all intellectual property rights to most of<br>
> my Haskell projects, to the extent that, were I to unintentionally sign<br>
> away my intellectual property, my open-source contributions would be safe -<br>
> what's the easiest way to do this?<br>
<br>
</div>I think you'll be fine just choosing the PublicDomain license option.<br>
Things you can't do with such an option:<br>
<br>
* bundle other people's code which isn't under public domain<br>
* somehow enforce that only certain libraries will run with your<br>
program: the user should be able to replace the BSD3 licensed<br>
dependencies with their own if they want to<br>
<br>
I think in the end, the fact that pretty much every package ever depends<br>
on ‘base’ which is BSD3 and PublicDomain option exists in Cabal should<br>
be convincing enough that you are in fact able to publish your part of<br>
the code under more lenient license.<br>
<br>
> Thanks,<br>
> Ben Foppa<br>
<br>
If anything's wrong in my post, I hope someone can correct me.<br>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Mateusz K.<br>
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