You might be interested in the very straightforward, brief and (mostly) humorous license from Ask Bjoern Hansen:

(From mod_proxy_add_forward.c)

/* =================================================================
 * "THE FOO LICENSE" (Revision 3.14159265358979323844): 
 *
 * <ask@netcetera.dk> wrote this file. As long as you retain this
 * notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff. If it does
 * anything you didn't want it to do, it is of course your own fault.
 * If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you
 * can buy me a beer in return. - Ask Bjoern Hansen.
 *                              
 * =================================================================
 */
[download]

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode

If happiness/unhappiness is all you care for, then it is probably more than enough.

If you believe that later down the road you might consider legal claims of your code (when someone else has adopted it) you may still need to consider the "exceedingly wordy" license.

tilley's unfortunate circumstances have focussed the minds of many in the open source world on legal issues, especially on this site.

Most stuff I have seen, apart from shipping a LICENSE file in the kit, contains a sentence such as

• This software is licensed under the terms of the GNU public licence, see ...
• This software is licenced under the same conditions as Perl itself.

Surely you can dispense with the verbosity by simply referring to the correct place. I'm no legal expert - do we have any monks with the appropriate knowledge?

--rW

Well you are still supposed to distribute the license (even if as seperate file as you mention). But there's the other matter of restrictions, granted the Artistic or MIT comes closest. I guess another concern of mine is I wish to express as little as possible because most of what even the simplest licenses lay out seems to be so much "common sense".

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"

Even your licence has restrictions. For you to be able to impose your will - even if that will is "no-one will impose restrcitions on this software" - you have to claim the copyright. Hence, you need a copyright notice, and that notice needs to propogate with the software.

Don't underestimate the importance of correct licencing. We know the tilly story. We know stories of people taking "free" code and making proprietary software out of it. We also know of examples of people licensing their software with a licence they don't understand - see the popular UK firewall team who think that their software shouldn't be copyable, even though it is GPL'ed. Get the licence right, it saves a lot of trouble later...

For most small projects (modules in particular) the standard blurb of 'This project is licensed under the same terms as Perl itself' should suffice.

However, if you're planning anything larger than a module, I encourage you to use one of the GNU licenses. While there's no case law currently backing them, they were written with the assistance of law professors and should be fairly solid. The enforcability of the artistic license on the other hand, has been questioned many times. From Bruce Perens essayon the open source definition...

It is, in my opinion, a sloppily-worded license, in that it makes requirements and then gives you loopholes that make it easy to bypass the requirements. Perhaps that's why almost all Artistic-license software is now dual-licensed, offering the choice of the Artistic License or the GPL.

Section 5 of the Artistic License prohibits sale of the software, yet allows an aggregate software distribution of more than one program to be sold. So, if you bundle an Artistic-licensed program with a five-line hello-world.c , you can sell the bundle.

He goes on to list a couple more flaws in the license. Definately worth a read for those who are considering licenses.

While there's no case law currently backing them, they were written with the assistance of law professors and should be fairly solid.

The GNU license being written by law professors means nothing. I recall many law professors being interviewed about what kind of decision they thought a court would rule and the court chose a decision which was the complete opposite of what all the law professors were saying. Go figure.

In effect, the judgment is based on what the judge's ideology is.

metadoktor

"The doktor is in."

Well, I'd certainly trust most law professors more than the average Perl hacker to write a license. The GPL might not be flawless, we'll have to wait and see what the courts decide, but until then I see it as one of the more solid licenses out there.

Well, then i realized that someone might turn around and use my code maliciously, roll it up and smoke it, sell it to a minor, etc. So, i think an important addition to your license might be something along the lines of:

• Thou shalt not hold the author(s) or copyright holder(s) liable for any claim, damages, or any other liability in connection with this software or the use or any dealings in this software.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

The standard disclaimer is something resembling this:

(your program name) comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details, see the LICENSE file. This is free software, you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details, see the LICENSE file.

When choosing a license you should also consider two things:

• Do you mind if someone takes your code, improves it and then doesn't release the changes?
• Do you mind if someone takes your code, compiles it, and starts selling it to people without giving them the source code, or otherwise restricts the buyer from having equal rights as you gave the seller?

If either of these bugs you, I recommend using one of the GNU licenses. For more information on free software licenses, please consult this.

indemnity. Though perhaps grant would be a better word choice than accept.

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"

/me wonders if you can public domain away liability.

I wholeheartedly agree with the first half, and that's why I've avoided it for so long. Public domain is certainly an option but I think credit should go where credit is due, otherwise I believe I am attempting to effectively PD the materials. The Artistic License is a good license, I still feel it is rather bulky and cumbersome. Not hindering, just cumbersome, a lot to keep in mind and explicitly comply with, I don't take myself *that* seriously.

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"