MIT license for all published code out of the forum

[freak]

If you really want to go into legal nitpicking, remove the content of everybody who did not agree to the license change on this forum by the end of the period and replace the content of their posting automatically with a link to their posting's content on the wayback archive

I find it interesting how carelessly you would throw away many thousands of posts just because they do not fit your licensing ideas. This forum has been in operation for 22 years now. Many people who posted are no longer around. I don't think you realize just how much would be lost if we were to do this. (and no, the wayback machine is not an adequate backup solution for this)

Maybe it is good to not have a blanket license to do whatever you want with other people's code if you value their contributions that little. Think about it.

[Tenaja]

How about a pop-up for license selection when the Code button is pressed in an editor?

I'm in favor of "every code posted after this date xx/xx/2024 is xx license unless otherwise stated."
That simplifies a lot of things. You can update the "conditions of use" that everybody is required to accept for the forum (or implement one). Many web sites have updates in conditions for use, regularly. Nobody should think twice on this.

[Bitblazer]

If you really want to go into legal nitpicking, remove the content of everybody who did not agree to the license change on this forum by the end of the period and replace the content of their posting automatically with a link to their posting's content on the wayback archive

I find it interesting how carelessly you would throw away many thousands of posts just because they do not fit your licensing ideas. This forum has been in operation for 22 years now. Many people who posted are no longer around. I don't think you realize just how much would be lost if we were to do this. (and no, the wayback machine is not an adequate backup solution for this)

Maybe it is good to not have a blanket license to do whatever you want with other people's code if you value their contributions that little. Think about it.

I think the OP has a point and it would help for the future to include something like a clause "by posting on this forum, you agree to have your ideas / sources be published and used under the MIT license, unless a different license is included.". I am no lawyer, so the wording might need to be rephrased, but the intention of what i mean, should be clear. Just to reduce problems in the future.

This is about content published worldwide to the general public without any access limitation that does NOT include a license itself. The MIT / ZBlib / BSD / Apache licenses are quite fair and without any license, a lot worse license might be applied.

[mk-soft]

How does Microsoft do it on their help pages with the code snippets or Stack Overflow with their pages.

I also think that 99.99% of the code contributions do not need any relevant licence information.
I think that a general "Legal Disclaimer and Notices" like githup or similar should apply to the forum posts as long as no licence is explicitly stated.

Thus the disclaimer should also be given for the codes.

And for some codes with the note - If you use this code, it's your own fault.

[AZJIO]

It seems to me easier to agree on a case-by-case basis.
1. If the author himself provides his code to help you, then most likely you have the opportunity to use it in a commercial project.
2. If the author publishes a complex module, then in most cases he himself wants this module to be used. It seems to me that the rule of good form is to indicate the author of a complex module in the description of your program in the form of gratitude.
3. The worst thing that can happen with an MIT license is that you post the code of a finished program, as I often do, but mostly small programs, but I don’t want anyone who downloaded it to compile and enter their name in the description and sold it as if he himself wrote the program. It is very difficult to write a license, so I often mention that you can use parts of the code of the finished program, and you can improve my program by indicating the original source. You can even recognize the program as yours if you leave the source open and put 50% of the new functionality into the program, that is, in fact, after studying the source code you can write the program yourself, but at the same time you have made your own efforts to improve it. And if you want to leave the source closed, then be sure to indicate the original source on which the program was made, but again, you can call the program your own only after investing 50% of the work. Because I don't like those who sell other people's work. Example

[the.weavster]

Perhaps we could have a sticky thread where regular contributors to the forum can state that any code they've posted can be used freely. At least that would go some way to making it retrospective.

[Fred]

The whole point of these public forums is to help other people by answering to a question, so it's pretty obvious than if you post an answer, it can be reused in another program. That said, I can add a text in the 'Terms or Service' link of the forums like stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

Code: Select all

All publicly accessible user contributions are licensed as follows:

    Content contributed before 2024-06-14 (UTC) is distributed under each user terms.
    Content contributed on or after 2024-06-14 (UTC) is distributed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0.

[Fred]

Perhaps we could have a sticky thread where regular contributors to the forum can state that any code they've posted can be used freely. At least that would go some way to making it retrospective.

If you get RASHAD permission, you cover 90% of the forums

[DarkDragon]

The whole point of these public forums is to help other people by answering to a question, so it's pretty obvious than if you post an answer, it can be reused in another program. That said, I can add a text in the 'Terms or Service' link of the forums like stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

Code: Select all

All publicly accessible user contributions are licensed as follows:

    Content contributed before 2024-06-14 (UTC) is distributed under each user terms.
    Content contributed on or after 2024-06-14 (UTC) is distributed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0.

We still need some "if not specified otherwise" in the last sentence. Otherwise we cannot ever post GPL code or anything similar.

[ChrisR]

Wonder about the ShareAlike term in CC BY-SA 4.0

ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original

Does it mean that if you use, modify a forum code under this license, you have to publish it under this same license CC BY-SA 4.0 ?
The MIT license seems simpler and open but I don't know much about licences!

Perhaps we could have a sticky thread where regular contributors to the forum can state that any code they've posted can be used freely. At least that would go some way to making it retrospective.

It could have a flag in the User Control Panel and display in the forum below the usernames: MIT code "if not specified otherwise"

[freak]

The whole point of these public forums is to help other people by answering to a question, so it's pretty obvious than if you post an answer, it can be reused in another program. That said, I can add a text in the 'Terms or Service' link of the forums like stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

Code: Select all

All publicly accessible user contributions are licensed as follows:

    Content contributed before 2024-06-14 (UTC) is distributed under each user terms.
    Content contributed on or after 2024-06-14 (UTC) is distributed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0.

That is not a good license choice. Do you really expect people to provide proper attribution every time they copy 5 lines of code from the forum? (not even to speak about the "share alike" part). By adding that to the forum terms, all you are doing is pushing people into violating that license en masse. How does this make things better than now? If you absolutely have to do this, just use CC0 instead.

Also, do you really want to apply this to "all contributions" ? That includes all text that people write too. I'm not sure everybody would be ok with that.

Btw, just putting this on the "Terms" page won't cut it. You have to get people to agree to this (not just new users but existing ones too). People agreed to the existing terms when they created and account. You can't just change them afterwards without getting people to accept them again.

In my opinion things are ok as they are. Deciding to add a license or not is up to the creators. We as the forum operator have no business imposing license restrictions on people. I for one don't want to have to place a "do whatever the f*ck you want with this" disclaimer above every code post I make in the future.

[ChrisR]

I quite agree, I think 95-99% of the guys don't care.
The spirit in most programming forums is to answer questions, solve problems, publish tools, tips. We're just happy to get a comment or see code used, nothing more and "do whatever the f*ck you want with all my f*cking code"
Has there ever been a lawsuit, for using code shared on a development forum ? won ? I couldn't find anything by googling

[Fangbeast]

If you get RASHAD permission, you cover 90% of the forums

It's almost as if Sparkie has been reborn in a different body Fred??

[idle]

there is a thing called public domain and we're posting on it!
so if there's no license or copywrite and you know that the author wrote it, it's pretty safe to assume it's public domain.
where I use other peoples code I usually mention it in the comments as well that's a fair thing to do
next we'll be having to state no animals were harmed or abused in making of said code, looking at your Fangles

[BarryG]

there is a thing called public domain and we're posting on it!
so if there's no license or copywrite and you know that the author wrote it, it's pretty safe to assume it's public domain.

I agree. No license with it = instant public domain. No need to change anything.