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Comment by liblfds | Hacker News Reader

No. Property rights are absolutely, profoundly, completely, totally, utterly central, vital, irreplacable and essential. Licenses are an offshoot of property rights.

However, the arrangement of property rights as they are now being forced upon me - other entities telling me how I must go about managing my rights - this I do object to.

I know what I want to do with the property rights in this case, but I am often told there's all kinds of trouble in achieving this, because of these other entities enforcing their view of property rights upon me and the people who would form a contract with me (by choosing to use the software on the basis I am offering it).

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You think that the copyright default of "all works are copyrighted essentially forever, and you cannot use, modify or share copyrighted works of any kind" is sane? Seriously?

If you want to talk about property rights, we can talk about those. But we're talking about copyright, which is a very different concept to property (despite attempts to create misleading terms like "intellectual property" to muddy the waters).

Copyright is supposed to be a method of encouraging creative works. It is not meant to be a method for software developers to maintain control over their users. I never said licenses were not important: YOU SAID THAT. Licenses are incredibly important -- free software couldn't exist without them because of draconian copyright laws funded by special interests that don't give a shit about creative works.

> I never said licenses were not important: YOU SAID THAT.

I thought you were saying I thought licenses were not important. I was trying to make it clear I think they are fundamentally important, by being an aspect of property rights.

Why is the title of the submission "license-less library"? If you agree with me that licenses are very important for free software, why even have that section on the front page?

Because until recently, the library was license-free.

Licenses are important as a concept. Licenses can exist, and when they do, they must be honoured. They are an aspect of the property rights of the owner of the software.

That doesn't mean you have to use one, and the library was not using one, so it was license-free.

There might be some confusion here in that when I speak of licensing being important, I mean the concept - I do not particularly mean licensing as it exists today in practise.

As was pointed out in an early post in this discussion, the matter is now not so clear cut. I've added per data-structure information on licensing, and it's no so straightfoward a situation now as to be able to say, in a blanket fashion, "license-free". I'm thinking about what to do about that. The library is much closer to license-free than anything else, but it's hard to explain the situation in the one-line description while keeping it short and to the point.

Why don't you just license it under a single free software license and call it a day? Why say "you have an infinite set of dual licenses"? If you really, really really don't care just use CC0.

I don't understand your focus on the "concept of licensing". It's such an odd thing to focus on with such vigour. In my mind, a license is a tool that allows me to ensure that users of my software have freedoms that they deserve. Some people use it as a tool for oppressing users. But licenses are a tool, simple as that. They are a consequence of copyright law. Copyright licenses have literally nothing to do with property rights (you can't put a copyright license on a goat or a piece of land).

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