jgz - License

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License Terms

Jgz is released under the so-called "MIT License":

Copyright (c) 2007  Thomas Pornin

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Explanations

In plain words, this license means that I don't want the fame, but I will not take the blame either. You may reuse jgz as you wish for any purpose, provided that you understand that I am not to be considered responsible for anything in any circumstance. The license text above is copied in the jgz source files, and should be kept in the source files as long as their content can be traced back to me: this is for my own protection. Apart from that, there is no need to cite me anywhere (neither in the acknowledgements, advertising or accompanying documentation), although it could be viewed as a courteous gesture to drop me a mail in case you reuse jgz and find it great (or not -- I gladly accept bug reports as well).

The whole license issue is quite fishy. "Public Domain" is a tempting notion, but it is difficult to achieve worldwide without any fear of future legal entanglement, especially with some juridictions which prohibit an author from abandoning the so-called "moral rights" (I currently live in France, and French law enforces such moral rights). The only sure way to put some code in the Public Domain seems to be a combination of publishing, then dying, and then waiting for almost a century and fervently hoping that copyright laws are not modified in the mean time. I therefore use the "MIT License" because it does what I want without requiring my demise, and since that license has been around for some time, it seems quite resilient to attacks from enraged lawyers.