I’m being triggered by the use of Unlicense, a license that I abhor purely because of its catastrophically bad name.
The problem is that when expressed in the past tense (-ed suffix), “Unlicense” means precisely the opposite of an existing English word.
If software is unlicensed, it means you have no license, no permission, to do anything with it. (Or, if it is your code, it means that you have not granted license/permission to anyone else to do anything with it.)
If software is Unlicensed, it means you have permission to do absolutely anything with it.
That’s a recipe for confusion.
In old versions of npm, to convey “all rights reserved” or “proprietary” you used to need to set the license field in package.json to "UNLICENSED"; so that "UNLICENSED" was the opposite of "Unlicense" (and I think it was case-insensitive, too).
And just so we’re clear, it’s not the word “unlicensed” that’s at fault, it’s Unlicense that’s at fault for hijacking an existing word to mean the opposite thing. Which is hardly a new phenomenon in language, I suppose (let, cleave, sanction, &c.), but still—.
When I want public domain and want to be nice about the legal technicalities for all jurisdictions, I use CC0 instead, largely just because its name isn’t bad, but also because its contents seem to be slightly more highly regarded legally. https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/
In this case something different but related is going on: software engineers have come to perceive a license as something negative, as something that sets limitations on what you can do. This makes an un-license seem desirable, as it's freedom from restriction. This also matches our behavior: code on a blog post is assumed to be free to copy and use, unless it has a license attached that limits this freedom.
In reality of course the base state is reversed: having no license means you are allowed approximately nothing, and a license gives you (often limited) rights to do something with it. In reality an un-license would take away rights you previously have been granted.
It feels like we are on the threshold to license becoming a Janus word.
> The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.
This highlights an interesting philosophical disparity. You (correctly) point out that a license is a "permission to do something" - but the perception among folks appears to be that the license is in fact what restricts your permissions. Thus, from their perspective, "the smaller the license, the larger your freedoms" - and, so, they conclude (incorrectly, but understandably) that the end-point of "no license whatsoever" would correspond with "complete freedom".
And if you want something OSI-approved you can use either the MIT-0 [1] or the Zero-Clause BSD [2] license. The MIT-0 license is the MIT license without the attribution requirement, the Zero-Clause BSD license is (somewhat misleadingly) the ISC license without the attribution requirement.
I’ve heard that CC0 is better for content than code (though I can’t remember exactly why). Either way, I wish the Unlicense and WTFPL people would get over themselves and just go with MIT: a license that I think they would use if it was called the “Do-What-You-Want-Just-Don’t-Sue-Me” License.
Creative Commons generally is better for content than for code. CC0 is an exception. It tries to put something into public domain and where that is not possible tries to grant the same rights.
Thanks for the correction. I’ve even confused myself on this one because of the title of https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/8918 before, and I did it again now a few years later! My apologies.
One shouldn't really care what npm did/does outside npm projects unless that aspect of npm becomes widespread beyond their eco-system. And it seems the Unlicense predates npm by at least 11 days (1 January 2010 vs 12 January 2010, but it seems like npm didn't start that word for this meaning until much later anyway).
I wonder how much the Unlicense's name was inspired by 7-Up's long-running "The Uncola" advertising campaign or other similar pop culture usages of "un-" as a joke-ish like that.
It's not a perfect use of the word, perhaps, but it's cute without being offensive so I like it (this is ignoring any actual concerns about its content, which would be a distinct discussion).
If you miss out on Kakoune because you don't like the name of the license, that's a shame. It's really good. Neither am I a huge fan of Unlicense, nor do I think C++ is all that great, but Kakoune is nevertheless excellent.
The right to the copy/text? The right to being allowed to reproduce? The copyright holder is the person who has the right to do so. Seems ok to me.
In any case, it’s a well established old term now while Unlicense was coined long after unlicensed was already an established word with a different (opposite!) meaning.
The problem is that when expressed in the past tense (-ed suffix), “Unlicense” means precisely the opposite of an existing English word.
If software is unlicensed, it means you have no license, no permission, to do anything with it. (Or, if it is your code, it means that you have not granted license/permission to anyone else to do anything with it.)
If software is Unlicensed, it means you have permission to do absolutely anything with it.
That’s a recipe for confusion.
In old versions of npm, to convey “all rights reserved” or “proprietary” you used to need to set the license field in package.json to "UNLICENSED"; so that "UNLICENSED" was the opposite of "Unlicense" (and I think it was case-insensitive, too).
And just so we’re clear, it’s not the word “unlicensed” that’s at fault, it’s Unlicense that’s at fault for hijacking an existing word to mean the opposite thing. Which is hardly a new phenomenon in language, I suppose (let, cleave, sanction, &c.), but still—.
When I want public domain and want to be nice about the legal technicalities for all jurisdictions, I use CC0 instead, largely just because its name isn’t bad, but also because its contents seem to be slightly more highly regarded legally. https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/