Comments on: My take on the attribution food-fight http://boldlyopen.com/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/ To boldly muse about Open Source Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:15:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Bagel Belly Blog http://boldlyopen.com/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/#comment-24073 Bagel Belly Blog Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:05:03 +0000 http://www.rabellino.it/blog/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/#comment-24073 <strong>Sourcesense news...</strong> Gianugo is visiting from Italy this week, which means apart from eating some of the best food Norwich has to offer, there's some Sourcesense news. Firstly, for those that weren't able to make it to the Open Source Business...... Sourcesense news…

Gianugo is visiting from Italy this week, which means apart from eating some of the best food Norwich has to offer, there’s some Sourcesense news. Firstly, for those that weren’t able to make it to the Open Source Business……

]]> By: Gianugo http://boldlyopen.com/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/#comment-23541 Gianugo Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:52:42 +0000 http://www.rabellino.it/blog/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/#comment-23541 Colm, just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing: I'm an attribution guy (in the BSD/Apache way) since long time, so no need to convince me. When I'm talking about attribution, I'm talking about the new license breed that forces users to "prominently display" on every "user visible screen" a "graphic of no less than dimension x and y with the following text" (add marketing blabla). Is this attribution the way we intended it? I don't think so. Colm,

just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing: I’m an attribution guy (in the BSD/Apache way) since long time, so no need to convince me. When I’m talking about attribution, I’m talking about the new license breed that forces users to “prominently display” on every “user visible screen” a “graphic of no less than dimension x and y with the following text” (add marketing blabla). Is this attribution the way we intended it? I don’t think so.

]]> By: Colm MacCarthaigh http://boldlyopen.com/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/#comment-23498 Colm MacCarthaigh Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:47:13 +0000 http://www.rabellino.it/blog/2007/01/21/my-take-on-the-attribution-food-fight/#comment-23498 Any heated debate is news to me, as I try to pay as little attention to the political side of open-source/free software as possible in general, but if there really is a squabble, it strikes me as particularly moronic and unproductive. A new low in that particular arena of theoretical hair-splitting ideologues. When I write software, I try to use as permissive a license as I can, but lately I'm leaning more towards the Creative Commons "By attribution" licenses than anything else. I already use them for my music and my photography. My motivations are not commercial, I couldn't care less about making money from anything I write, but I'm strongly in favour of attribution because it makes me feel good to hear back from people who use what I've done. It also makes me feel good when it turns out I can help them, and improve things. It provides a feedback channel that some third party can't get in the way of. I can't see what's wrong with that. When a third party uses my software, or a photograph, because I'm attributed, the end user still has a way of contacting me, still has a way of licensing it themselves (without the need for copyleft), and I still have a way to hear from them about how it could be better for their needs. I couldn't disagree with you more - attribution definitely doesn't suck. And I see nothing in your argument that opposes it on its merits. How on earth you could consider attribution more cumbersome, hard to understand, difficult to comply to or dangerous than the requirements of the GPL would be beyond me, and that's Open Source (TM). As for redefining Open Source, why bother? Just use a license you're comfortable with and get on with it. Any heated debate is news to me, as I try to pay as little attention to the political side of open-source/free software as possible in general, but if there really is a squabble, it strikes me as particularly moronic and unproductive. A new low in that particular arena of theoretical hair-splitting ideologues.

When I write software, I try to use as permissive a license as I can, but lately I’m leaning more towards the Creative Commons “By attribution” licenses than anything else. I already use them for my music and my photography. My motivations are not commercial, I couldn’t care less about making money from anything I write, but I’m strongly in favour of attribution because it makes me feel good to hear back from people who use what I’ve done. It also makes me feel good when it turns out I can help them, and improve things. It provides a feedback channel that some third party can’t get in the way of. I can’t see what’s wrong with that.

When a third party uses my software, or a photograph, because I’m attributed, the end user still has a way of contacting me, still has a way of licensing it themselves (without the need for copyleft), and I still have a way to hear from them about how it could be better for their needs.

I couldn’t disagree with you more - attribution definitely doesn’t suck. And I see nothing in your argument that opposes it on its merits. How on earth you could consider attribution more cumbersome, hard to understand, difficult to comply to or dangerous than the requirements of the GPL would be beyond me, and that’s Open Source (TM).

As for redefining Open Source, why bother? Just use a license you’re comfortable with and get on with it.

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