The Lil License - <AUTHOR> http://lillicense.org/v1.html <comment><USER2> Please just use the ISC license. It's a permissive license that is as short as modern law allows. It's well understood and accepted. It's the default license for node.js packages and the preferred license for OpenBSD. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license)

Here it is in it's entirety:

Copyright <YEAR> <OWNER>

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

<comment><USER3> I prefer the zero clause BSD license because it gets rid of the annoying requirement to keep the copyright notice around.

Any arguments against?

<comment><AUTHOR> The argument against is that someone who then encounters the code without the notice will have no idea what license the code is under. They won't be aware of the BSD rights and disclaimers that otherwise should apply to them.

What we do here instead is explicitly say that you can include the Lil License text, or link to it instead — as we tend to do in these modern times.

<comment><USER3> That's just the thing. I want a license that is clear about my intentions when I provide them a copy. What ever copy they receive from someone else is not, and should not, be my problem in any way, I want nothing to do with that transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I appreciate the intent, patents are complicated, and the reason more complicated and weak licenses like the Apache license version 2 exist are precisely to address the complexity of patents.

Software nerds don't like complicated licenses just because they're not lawyers, but legal complexity is inherent in human affairs and cannot be simplified too much. The shortest license isn't necessarily the most desirable one. Writing a new license just because the Apache license is tl;dr is just not a good idea. Saying that you'll just ignore the law because you disagree with it will actually probably work out for a while until you're big enough for the law to no longer ignore you in return.

We've had amateur licenses written many times before. GPLv1 and the first Perl license are examples. They both had to be rewritten once someone who actually knows law looked them over.

In other words, kids, don't try this at home. There are professionals who can do this for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally. And if it's a terrible idea, then it will die a quiet death, and that will be fine. But there's a little more here than just "don't try this at home."

The Apache license is a wonderful license. If you want to use it, you absolutely should use it.

But people don't use it. They prefer to use something they can understand, something that doesn't have to be interpreted by a legal team, and something that they can feel comfortable imposing on the users of their code.

According to a 2015 survey conducted by Github, MIT and BSD simple licenses are nearly five times more often used than Apache. Out of the top ten most starred open source projects, nine of them use MIT/BSD, and only one uses Apache.

Clearly, there's a desire — in the actual practice of sharing open source — for something that explains your legal and social obligations in as plain an English as we can muster, while still being crystal clear in legal terms.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure that's because Github encouraged, and to some extent still does, for people to completely ignore licenses. This attitude spreads and explains why people want the least amount of license posible.

The solution isn't to make licenses more "user-friendly". That user friendliness can be a dangerous illusion. The solution is to not forget the legal lessons that we already lived back before free software was renamed to open source in 1998.

<comment><AUTHOR> Github is fairly aggressive these days about alerting you to put a standard license in your repository.

But they still remain with the problem that most folks choose the user- friendly MIT (I would, and 9 out of 10 of the top projects do). This leaves them with an issue: It's not clear that contributions submitted to an MIT project grant permission to incorporate those contributions under the same terms. We understand it socially, but it's not legally explicit.

Github has been trying to address this in their Terms of Service, by saying that simply by using the site, you agree that "inbound=outbound": [https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#6-...](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#6-contributions-under-repository-license)

But the Github TOS isn't really the right place to be legislating that. For more, see: [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/02/16/Against- Legislatin...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/02/16/Against-Legislating- the-Nonobvious.html)

<comment><USER5> > It's not clear that contributions submitted to an MIT project grant > permission to incorporate those contributions under the same terms. We > understand it socially, but it's not legally explicit.

Given that GitHub works only through forks and pull requests, this is not a problem. There are two repos A and B published under the MIT License. There is no need to address what happens when the contributor behind B sends you a pull request. (There is no need for contributor who published B to even send you a pull request; in theory, you could "reach over" and start incorporating anything from B into A without any participation from the person behind B—just like you [probably] did with all your vendored libraries.)

Worrying about this is one of the cargo cultiest memes, second only to all the videos on YouTube who think they're protected by a notice that says, "I don't claim ownership of this video; all rights belong to X".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Friends, I totally get the initial instinct to think "Aieeee! Not another amateur open source software license! Those things breed like flies!"

But if you wouldn't mind taking two minutes to read the text of the license before giving in to that feeling — I think you'll find that it might put you more at ease than what you're currently using — if you're using MIT.

Like MIT and ISC, it's short and sweet and comprehensible, and like Apache it tries to establish common standards around potential patent use and contributions back to the codebase. It hits a sweet spot that, for me, doesn't exist in anything currently on the OSI's long list of licenses.

I did run it by a couple of lawyers and a couple of open source developers before publishing it this morning. But I don't believe that review should matter too much to you: An OSS license is an agreement between the author and the user of the software. If they can both easily understand it to mean the same thing, then we can feel that we're on solid ground. That's why we use MIT today.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, I've been conditioned by the scary stories 'DannyBee tells here to worry about new license language that doesn't come directly from lawyers.

It sounds like you've actually had lawyers look at it. A blurb anywhere on this page indicating that it's been vetted this would be pretty powerful!

<comment><AUTHOR> It may be pretty powerful, but I'm uncomfortable believing that it really should be. For starters, every lawyer has a different opinion, a different style of preferred phrasing, and a different understanding of what open source software is. Ultimately the parties involved are you, your users and your contributors. Most of us don't have lawyers.

That said, I think it might be effective to put some short legal opinions, from experts in this particular field, into the FAQ. If anyone's listening: that would make for a great pull request.

The goal here is to make this thing as shipshape, watertight and bulletproof as possible, while remaining "simpler than MIT". Then it becomes the license I would have always wanted to use.

<comment><USER6> I see your concern. I think _one qualified lawyer_ would put this issue to bed. Surely there's one we can just pay a couple hundred to to scan it?

This license sure _looks_ great. It probably is! It would be neat if we could just know that.

It's a cool thing to publish either way. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's do it. I think it's mostly a matter of picking not just a qualified lawyer, but one of the best possible lawyers for the job: ideally, someone well known who has dealt with OSS licenses and lawsuits in the past.

I've opened a ticket for it: [https://github.com/jashkenas/lil- license/issues/3](https://github.com/jashkenas/lil-license/issues/3)

<comment><USER6> 'DannyBee, I blame you for this, so do you have any recommendations?

Jeremy, not that you need the help, but I think this is really neat and if you want to pass the hat around to pay for something formal I'm happy to chip in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having a nonstandard licence on your code basically ensures that no corporation will use your project. Internal clearing processes become _a lot_ more expensive if it's not one of the approved licences.

<comment><USER8> Bit off topic, but is the WTFPL considered a standard licence? If I want to give people the ability to do whatever the fuck they want to with my code, is the WTFPL considered a good choice?

<comment><USER9> I used it for a while in a project. Just about everybody was fine with it except for Google. I got several emails from Google employees over the years saying that they could not use it unless I changed the license.

<comment><USER10> This is true, and now there's public documentation that explains a little more of the rationale: [https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfp...](https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfpl- not-allowed)

<comment><USER11> Is the JSON license allowed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please stop making new licenses. You do not need a new license, you need to understand how to use the existing ones and how they interact with one another.

The number of license interactions you need to mange on any project is the _factorial_ of the number of licenses in the project. With even just 4 licenses (pretty easy when you're _just trying to make it work_ ), that's 24 sets of interactions. Just wait till you get to 7 licenses.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Check out License Zero. It helps open source software stay free for use and > modification for non-commercial purposes, while commercial users can be > required to pay after a trial period.

I would delete the words "open source" from this sentence. License Zero is not an open source license, as open source licenses cannot discriminate against commercial uses. See the Open Source Definition by the OSI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the correction. I've made the change in the FAQ to not describe License Zero as an open source license. On its own website, it's very careful not to.

<comment><USER14> Open source or not, thank you for bringing it to my attention, I can see some potential benefits of Licence Zero, especially for larger projects where funding is more important.

The Lil licence looks promising too.

<comment><USER15> Thank you both for your interest!

For completeness: The original License Zero Public License, now dubbed the License Zero Noncommercial Public License (L0-NC), is admittedly _not_ an Open Source license per OSI's definition.

There is now also a draft, alternative public license for L0 projects, The License Zero Reciprocal Public License (L0-R). It's a hair-trigger copyleft- style license, built in much the same way, from a BSD-2-Clause base:

[https://github.com/licensezero/licensezero-reciprocal- public...](https://github.com/licensezero/licensezero-reciprocal-public- license/blob/master/LICENSE.mustache)

More here:

[https://medium.com/licensezero/a-hacker-public- license-d2805...](https://medium.com/licensezero/a-hacker-public- license-d28053038b45)

I believe L0-R _is_ an Open Source license, and have submitted to OSI for approval. I also believe it will be as, if not more effective than L0-NC in driving industrial users to purchase private licenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hmm. As I understand, the primary purpose here is to have a permissive license with a patent grant. Some problems I see:

1\. If you're actually have patent claims to your name (a minority of people, while every author is ipso facto a copyright holder), you will probably want to use an expressly vetted, narrowly drafted patent grant.

2\. The way the license is worded, it may ask you to do things that you can't do, e.g. if you have the rights to use a patent claim, but not to (sub)license it. (Contrast this with how the Apache license words its patent grant.)

3\. It's not clear how broad the patent grant is. It's not inconceivable to read it so that once somebody uses the software, they get an unlimited right to your patent claims, even outside that specific piece of software.

4\. You may be waiving your right to use software patents for defensive purposes, too.

5\. There's lots of fuzziness in the wording. What are the "usage rights that the author hold on [the software]"? US patent law grants rights to _exclude_ others from making, using, selling, or importing the patented invention; it does not grant a right to exploit the patented invention. (Unlike copyright, which creates an exclusive right for authors to use and distribute the work.)

6\. How compatible is the license with other licenses with patent grants?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the list of concerns, it's very much appreciated. If you care enough to open any of them up as an issue on Github, it would be great to discuss them there. But for now, in short:

1\. Yes. If you actually own a patent portfolio that you value highly, you may want to use a custom, narrowly worded grant. This license might not be for you. This license is for the 50+% of open source projects currently using MIT.

2\. I don't quite follow the problem you're outlining here. The Apache license tries to scope its patent license only to actions that "necessarily infringe" on the Work and the Contributions to it. I'm not sure how you mean for (sub)licensing to fit in.

3\. The patent grant is intentionally simpler and broader than, say, Apache. There's no clawback provision, and in short, it gives you: "usage rights to any patents the authors may hold on the software." It doesn't give you the right to use the authors' unrelated patents. The balance here is struck to give more protection and confidence to the user of the open source, not to rigidly protect the potential software patent holder. I think that's the right way to lean.

4\. This rhetoric around offensive and defensive uses of software patents is what's keeping Facebook in such hot water with GraphQL and React right now. The only way to use a software patent against someone is offensively — it's a MAD-style threat of legal action. If you want mutually assured patent annihilation, then don't use LIL to release open-source software that uses your patents. It's not a great mix.

5\. In US patent law, you can _sell_ your patent, _prevent_ other people from making use of it, or _license_ usage rights to it. The latter is what we're doing in this case. ([https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/selling-your-patent- what-...](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/selling-your-patent-what-you- need-to-know))

6\. That is a great question. And it would be good to eventually have a wiki page, detailing compatibility with various alternative popular licenses. As a permissive license (more permissive than Apache), my best guess is that it would be generally compatible — but we should look into it further.

<comment><USER16> Some clarifications:

1\. My larger point is that this license simply is not going to interest a lot of people because they don't have patents to begin with. Only a minority of contributors will have patent claims, and almost all of them will be commercial contributors. They will simply not be interested in such a license and not contribute to a project using it; for people who don't have patents, the additional patent grant does not make a difference, other than that they're possibly scaring away contributors who do have patents.

2\. The point here is that the license may _require_ you to grant rights that you can't grant, ergo you can't contribute work under the license. The license requires you to grant any rights that you hold, but you may not have the right to grant such a sublicense. The Apache license, in contrast, only requires you to grant a license for patent claims that you can actually license.

3\. My point here is that the patent grant may be uncomfortably broad especially for commercial contributors in that they give up rights that they're not willing to give up.

4\. This is quite different from the Facebook situation. It's one thing to allow others to use your patents; patent holders may be much more reluctant to unilaterally disarm defensively, too. In order to get them to accept such a broad patent grant, you have to convince them that this in their best interest, too. That you can convince people without patents to their name to use the license is irrelevant, as it does not matter whether they use a license with or without a patent grant. If I were a patent holder, why would I give up my defensive rights against third parties along with a patent grant for using the software? How would that serve my interests?

5\. So, what are the usage rights if you believe that this is a well-defined legal term? Can you be more specific? How are they related to patent claims? Have you researched whether this would include sublicensing rights and whether sublicensing scenarios need to be considered separately?

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's keep digging in!

1\. I feel entirely the opposite way about the appeal of an MIT-style license that includes a patent grant. It's not primarily about making the author feel comfortable — as the author probably doesn't have patents, and doesn't intend to. It's about giving the _user_ of the software confidence. Because the user has no idea what patents the author may or may not hold. At this moment, this is playing out to dramatic effect in Facebook's open source projects — you can see an example here: [https://github.com/facebook/graphql/issues/351](https://github.com/facebook/graphql/issues/351)

Being able to give users of my software fuller confidence under the Lil License also makes me more interested in using it as an author. It's a virtuous cycle.

2\. I'm afraid I still don't quite see the issue you're describing here. If I'm following correctly, the hypothetical case is a contributor who writes a bit of code that exercises a patent that she has a license to, but not permission to sublicense, and then wants to submit that code to an LIL- licensed project. If she's not allowed to sublicense, then she can't contribute that code. She wouldn't be able to contribute it to an Apache project either.

3\. It might be. I think that its width is more suitable for most open source projects than the narrower Apache and MPL, but that's something that would make for a good discussion. I'll open a ticket.

4\. Again, we're talking past each other a bit. This isn't really trying to appeal to the Facebooks of the world — it's trying to appeal to us regular folk. That I might be able to convince people without patents to use the license is not irrelevant, it's exactly the point. Those people are the target audience. From a user's point of view, the patent grant is still important — _because I never know for certain when an author may or may not hold a patent on the code_.

5\. If I grant you usage rights to a patent, I grant you a license to make, use, sell, import and otherwise transfer implementations of the invention described in that patent. If you think we need to spell out all of those words explicitly, perhaps throwing in "have made" and "offer to sell" as well, feel free to open a ticket and we'll talk about it further.

<comment><USER16> 1\. This wouldn't have changed anything about the GraphQL situation. Unlike with copyrights, getting a patent is expensive. Companies don't do that for fun and they don't give their just acquired patent claims away for free. They may grant a limited license (narrowly scoped to include only the specific software or excluding use for defensive purposes), but there's no point in first paying for a patent and then giving it away for free.

2\. Correct, she's barred from contributing, and if she accidentally does so, anyway, she may get into further trouble, because she's violating one license or the other. And no, Apache does not have the problem, because that patent grant is specifically limited to patent claims that contributors have the right to license. Same goes for the OSI BSD+Patent license (not to be confused with Facebook's BSD+Patents license, which has a similar name, but a totally different purpose).

4\. And a license will not protect you from that, because unlike with copyright, innocent infringement does not preclude liability. See the folks that are building React variants to avoid the Facebook license: they risk infringing upon patent claims, anyway (as long as they use similar algorithms), and won't have a patent grant to protect them. They can grant any patent-related rights they want, and it'll result in zilch protection. Granting rights only matters if you can actually grant the rights. Without being the actual patent holder, you cannot indemnify anyone.

5\. "Opening tickets" is fruitless, because you still end up with a crayon license. What you should do is consult actual lawyers specialized in the field and let them draft a license to your specification.

[1] [https://opensource.org/licenses/BSDplusPatent](https://opensource.org/licenses/BSDplusPatent)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
        > Permission is hereby granted by the authors of this software, to any person

Person as in what, a natural person? What about non persons such as legal entities?

        > and including usage rights to any patents the authors may hold on it

So the license allows you to use any patents (held by the project author) included in the project, but it doesn't cover anything about patents used by contributors when submitting changes. OK...

        > Any modification to the software submitted to the authors may be incorporated into the software
        > under the terms of this license.

May? That seems like something that should really be changed to "Any modification to the software submitted [...] will be incorporated into [...]" or something similar that _doesn't_ let people decide about this on the fly.

This license as a whole is rather vague, leaving a lot up to interpretation. This isn't something you want from the only thing that stands between you and a potential legal nightmare. Just use good existing licenses such as the MPL 2.0, Apache, GPL (or some flavour of it), or even the MIT license (though I would strongly recommend not using it without a CLA).

<comment><AUTHOR>
      > Person as in what, a natural person?

Person as in a legal person. This includes entities like corporations, organizations, representatives and so on: [http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/person](http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/person)

      > but it doesn't cover anything about patents used by contributors...

It tries to. Any change contributed to the project grants permission to incorporate that change under the same terms of the license, which includes the patent grant. This is how people generally tend to behave with open source.

      > May? That [...] should really be changed to [...] will

I also considered "will" and "shall" and "grants permission to" and a few other options, but "may" fits most precisely and succinctly. Submitted contributions aren't necessarily going to be merged into the project, but they may be, and if they are, the act of submission back to the project grants permission to incorporate them under the same terms of the license.

[http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/may](http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/may)

<comment><USER17>
        > Person as in a legal person. This includes entities like corporations,
        > organizations, representatives and so on:
        > http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/person

This may be the case for US law ("person" including both individuals and organisations), but it might also not be the case for all countries across the world. For example, Dutch law seems to define "person" as the individual (e.g. you and me) and seems to use a separate term for legal entities and the likes. It's possible that in practise the two are considered the same but I haven't been able to find such an example.

Exactly because of this it's better to be explicit. For example, the MPL 2.0 explicitly defines this:

        > 1.1. "Contributor"
        >
        >      means each individual or legal entity that creates, contributes to the
        >      creation of, or owns Covered Software.

Here the term "contributor" is used, but the same could apply to the term "person".

        > It tries to. Any change contributed to the project grants permission to
        > incorporate that change under the same terms of the license, which
        > includes the patent grant.

The patent grant states that any patents owned by the author can be used by the software's users:

        > and including usage rights to any patents the authors may hold on it

However, nowhere is it stated that patents used for contributions automatically belong (or can be used by) the authors and can thus also be used by the users. Defining what "authors" means could clear things up, though you'll probably want to separate the definition from "contributors" since you probably don't want random "contributors" to also be an "author" (this could give them too much power for example).

Again the MPL 2.0 is a good example since it does cover this, albeit not in a single place and in a somewhat hard to grok way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right — I think this is the central point I'm trying to make:

If you want a license where every noun in the license is rigorously defined at the top, where every possible use of the software is spelled out explicitly, and where every eventuality is considered in advance, then the Lil License isn't for you. It's not supposed to be. We already have Apache 2.0 and MPL 2.0 for that, and they're great. Use 'em.

Instead, the goal here is to cover the bases we know we need to cover in 2017 (contributions and patents), while remaining as simple as or simpler than MIT — which is the license that everyone actually uses. It's a different goal.

<comment><USER18> So Lil is basically either

MIT + Patents Grant

or

Apache 2.0 but much simplified in wording and length.

Am i correct in the grand overview?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Try the COIL instead, if the main reason for this license is a patent clause.

[http://copyfree.org/content/standard/licenses/coil/license.t...](http://copyfree.org/content/standard/licenses/coil/license.txt)

edit: Please stop advertising for AL2. It's not as good a license as people think. It contains some fiddly terms that many people don't even know are there, or don't understand, and is distressingly easy for people to casually violate by accident. Its complexity adds to the problem as well, by offering many opportunities for unintended legal effects in (so far hypothetical) future lawsuits to arise from interactions between parts of the license, a problem with any long license, and AL2 has severe license incompatibility issues as well.

<comment><USER20> I've never heard of this license before. Has it been vetted the OSI or the FSF?

Also what specifically is bad about the Apache 2 license?

<comment><USER19> I AM NOT A LAWYER.

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

It is not certified by either FSF or OSI. The process of getting it evaluated by the OSI and certified involves a lot of money, unless it is such a popular license that the OSI is politically backed into a corner about it. The FSF's politics around such things get downright strange; I'm not even sure what it would take for the FSF to consider a non-GNU license.

AL2 contains restrictions such as a requirement to perform bookkeeping when making changes (notes for every modified file about who changed it) and restrictions against changing another file. The bookkeeping restriction is violated with stunning regularity; so far, nobody has been sued over it, as far as I know, but that's true of the majority of license violations anyway.

AL2 also, as I mentioned, has some serious license incompatibility problems. Some patent and indemnification material in AL2 is considered incompatible with GNU licenses prior to v3, for instance. In fact, any license that includes a restriction against any connected work being "more restrictive" in some way (which includes GNU licenses, among others) is likely to suffer some significant compatibility issues with any license that has weird quirks like the previously mentioned issues of AL2 (bookkeeping, invariant file), too. The patent termination part of AL2 is unlikely to cause incompatibility with most licenses (GNU licenses are weird, in that regard) unless they come with a restriction on "restrictions" and have a less restrictive patent clause than AL2 (no patent termination, for instance), but the edge cases in AL2 can cause issues with other licenses.

I'm not a lawyer (and this is not legal advice), but I think a case could be made in court that AL2 and GPLv3 are actually not compatible at all, because of those clauses, despite what ASF and FSF say.

Beyond that, there's just the simple fact of complexity. You've probably heard that software tends toward X bugs per Y lines of code, and that's true for the most straightforward, linear software designs. As the complexity of the design of the software increases, though, the possible unexpected interactions between parts of it increases as well. The result is that, in practical terms, the likelihood of bugs actually increases faster than the number of lines of code. The same effect occurs with legal licensing terms, to some degree; the more complex a software license, the more likely you are to run afoul of unexpected legal effects of the license. AL2 is a rather complex license, much simpler than GPLv3, but significantly more complicated than something like the COIL, especially given the inclusion of the terms I mentioned earlier, which are radical departures from the most widely-used, best-understood "state of the art" of license design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've had the impression lately that people are overly scared of licenses. Like, on the level that a forgotten dot or so at the end could completely change the meaning as seen by jurisdiction.

IANAL, but I don't feel that's the case. I'm actually pretty sure you could just put "You're free to use this software for whatever you want" in a somewhat obvious central location, and your users would be good. The obvious intent counts. The BSD licenses don't seem to do more (besides adding a few restrictions for the user).

WTFPL is another good example license. I haven't really heard that it's a bad or jurisdictionally "invalid" license.

(But sure, for "big" stuff I guess the comment by adrianN applies).

<comment><USER22> AFAIK there are certain rights that copyright holders can't actually waive in certain jurisdictions.

<comment><USER21> Yes, I have heard that the term "public domain" doesn't exist in some places and that might technically mean no rights are granted to the user at all, or something along these lines. And for that reason, some projects have some kind of dual-license ("this code is in the public domain, or totally free in case there is no such concept in your country").

But again I feel like that's acting and being scared without any evidence. (And it seems really silly to me that an author would actually have to adopt to the country of the _user_ ).

There is very little official statements to find on the internet. All I've ever heard about is these big corporations taking nasty fights, and that seems to scare people with their little tinker projects to death.

Realistically, I would be surprised if e.g. the MIT license was actually more user-friendly than the WTFPL.

I'd love to hear about these thoughts from actual lawyers!

<comment><USER19> I AM NOT A LAWYER.

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

The problems with public domain dedication across jurisdictional lines, as I understand them, are:

1\. Users (who are aware of how the law works, in general terms) in a country that doesn't recognize a right to relinquish copyright to the public domain will be afraid of getting sued, so they won't use the software. It might as well not be open source for them.

2\. Contributors to your public domain software from those countries are not allowed to relinquish copyright in their works to the public domain, and as a result you're actually accepting work under copyright into your otherwise- public-domain software, which means it's not really public domain software any longer, because of mutual copyright observance agreements between those countries. Thus, for instance, because the US recognizes German copyrights, and Germany doesn't allow dedication of copyrightable works to the public domain, a German contributing code to a public domain work in the US actually contaminates the public domain work with code covered by copyright, thus making it no longer a (pure) public domain work, even in the US, because of US recognition of German copyrights.

If the German in the above example actually transfers the copyright to you, then YOU dedicate the work to the public domain, that might work. I'm just guessing, though, and I'm pretty sure it would require some explicit legally binding (and provable) statements about transferring copyright to you.

<comment><USER23> To make this more complicated, in Germany copyright is not transferable at all. The best you can do is assign exclusive rights to someone else (doing that correctly is non-trivial). Even worse: There are some rights that belong to the creator alone and they cannot give them away.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, international copyright law is a damned bomb crater. It's nothing but devastation and wreckage, and threat of imminent demise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Permission is hereby granted by the authors of this software, (...) and > including usage rights to any patents the authors may hold on it, (...)

But what if the source code is modified? Will the users still get the usage right of the patents? And what if the source code is modified so much that the original code is barely recognizable? It seems to me that using this license means you're giving away your patents for free.

<comment><USER25> > original code is barely recognizable

Will the original authors still have copyright over it?

If yes: Then clearly in the mind of the law the original work is still present.

If no: Then the license choice of the original authors is not longer relevant.

<comment><USER24> Let me rephrase: users could use the software only to gain free access to the patents. Thus this license is like giving away access to the patents.

<comment><AUTHOR> The intent is to provide users of the software with full confidence that by using the software, they will not be held liable for infringing on the patents that the authors of and contributors to the software might hold on the software.

Other licenses, like Apache, include patent grant withdrawal clauses, where you can lose the right to use the patent if you initiate a lawsuit.

The notorious Facebook BSD+PATENTS license includes a similar withdrawal of patent grant, but for any Facebook patent, not just something related to the software in question, and also only if you sue Facebook or a subsidiary — the Apache withdrawal applies to "any entity".

Here, there are no withdrawal provisions, hopefully giving you that full confidence as a user. As an author, if you have a patent on something, and then you release an open source project under LIL that uses that patent, you give up the right to sue anyone for infringing on your patent by using your open source project, period.

I think that's more in the spirit of open source.

<comment><USER5> > The notorious Facebook BSD+PATENTS license includes a similar withdrawal of > patent grant [...] only if you sue Facebook or a subsidiary

This is not true. The Facebook PATENTS grant terminates if a patent assertion relating to the software is made against against "any party".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "distribute and sell": but what if I just want to distribute?

Oxford commas are important.

See: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma- lawsuit.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma- lawsuit.html?mcubz=0)

<comment><USER21> This is not a situation where Oxford commas are needed to disambiguate. The way you see it, I think an Oxford comma would force you to do even more things at the same time. But that's silly; this statement is granting you rights, and it's your choice on whether you want to exercise them or not. If some rights can be exercised only conditionally, the text needs to make that clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Don't roll your own crypto, er, I mean legal.

</comment><comment><USER28> What did your lawyers say?

</comment><comment><USER29> A tech project or project that is related to tech that does not have its primary domain serving HTTPS? It's hosted on GitHub Pages. Every single time.

</comment><comment><USER30> The contributor statement is new to me and definitely the highlight of this license:

> Any modification to the software submitted to the authors may be > incorporated into the software under the terms of this license.

I'd love something like this become a little more common. Making contributors sign paperwork is a tremendous hassle. Hopefully the OSI ([https://opensource.org/licenses](https://opensource.org/licenses)) will take a crack at this one soon. If it shows up on their list, I can see adoption ramping up.

</comment><comment><USER31> It looks like a fix to fb license issue...

"and including usage rights to any patents the authors may hold on it"

</comment><comment><USER32> I thought the open source community had matured beyond the need for everybody to write their own license.

<comment><USER33> I thought the open source community had matured beyond the need for everybody to use a single one-size-fits-all license in complete ignorance of their actual needs and goals.

<comment><USER32> They grew out of that before they realized there's little value in writing a new license when there are already so many to chose from.

I was just starting out when Google Code announced it would only host projects that used an approved license, and Google had a very short list of approved licenses. Sourceforge was more flexible than that, but they still discouraged people from striking out on their own.

It took me a while, but I was eventually grateful to Google for being so effective at hitting the brakes. Opensource.org currently lists 83 approved licenses. Fsf.org has a similar list. For a new license to be valuable to me it has to be measurably better than each of those 83 licenses in some way that matters to me. Otherwise it's an annoyance, at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this the opposite of react native license?

</comment><comment><USER35> Gray on gray text... Just why?

</comment><comment><USER36> Obvious XKCD is obvious: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

I really admire the goals here, and I read through the FAQ ... but I feel like this just adds to the noise.

As much as a respect Jeremy, I'd be a little cautious about using this text written by a non-lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why not CC0?

<comment><USER13> Creative Commons advise users against using CC0 for code. CC0 also got caught in a technicality, causing it to never get approved or disapproved as an open source license by the OSI.

<comment><USER38> CC does not advise against using CC0 for software, only their regular CC licenses. See: [https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just use Apache 2.0. Don't invent new licenses, there are way too many already. Unless your project offers something extraordinary, a custom license not written by an IP lawyer == no use of your code in any project where lawyers have to review the licensing.</comment>


Improved Docker Container Integration with Java 10 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.docker.com/2018/04/improved-docker-container-integration-with-java-10/ <comment><USER2> I can't seem to upgrade to Java 9 still. Its the module system. Waiting for open source to catch up in some situations. See one of the problems is that the way Java is started needs to change to enable JAXB. But many open source products have lots of code that start Java processes, and never use that command line. Did this change in Java 10, did they bring back JAXB so things will start again?

<comment><USER3> Nope. In fact the module containing JAXB (and 5 other EE technologies) have been deprecated and will be removed in Java 11. So indeed, you can use the `--add-modules java.xml.bind` workaround, but it will break with Java 11. The real solution is to add a JAXB implementation of your choice as dependency to the application.

(disclaimer: I'm author of the O'Reilly book Java 9 Modularity (see [https://javamodularity.com](https://javamodularity.com)) which discusses this and other migration issues in great detail)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could anyone point me to the advantages of running Java inside a Docker container? It seems to be VM in VM. Why do we need the extra redirection?

<comment><USER5> A container is not a VM (at least in the traditional sense). The advantages of running java inside of a container is that you can ship all of your things as one artifact, and run it on a bunch of different infrastructures, with all it's dependencies packaged together. So rather than needing to use something to ensure your properties are configured correctly, and all your passwords are where they need to be, and all your other bits and such are in place, you can pack it all in a container and run it anywhere (Well... "anywhere" being a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea haha)

<comment><USER6> So Java, which was supposed to be "write once, run anywhere", didn't meet that goal enough, so Docker wraps it in something that "actually for real" is supposed to be "write once, run anywhere", but even then doesn't quite meet that goal?

<comment><USER7> No. Java's "write once, run anywhere" promise is that you would not have to re-compile your source code to target different architectures like you do with C or C++. Docker's promise is that you don't have to rely on external things like databases, filesystem details, and other things _outside your program_ being in place across environments. Same idea, different levels of abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it me or does it seem odd that docker community edition is left out? And isn't adding an additional "silent c is for container" in front of cgroups a bit... Much?

I mean, if java 10 recognises cgroup limits, that should work under things like systemd and all container runtimes?

<comment><USER9> I can't see how it's EE only. It reads the appropriate bits to work out the memory available, can't see how CE would hide that.

The problem is wider than Java anyways. Containers see the system free memory, not what's available to that container regardless of the cgroup constraints. We've hit this many times and sometimes workarounds are available (mongodb) but sometimes they're not and in our k8s environment this means some pods will restart constantly when they try to cache over and above what their cgroup allows.

The real fix is to tell a container not the system free memory but that which it's been allowed to use - afaik this is really difficult to implement, which is why the kernel hasn't had this done yet.

EDIT: obvs the container could read the cgroup limits (which I assume is what Java 10 does) but all the userland tools would have to be changed as well as some kernel functions.

<comment><USER8> Hm, I wonder if this might possibly be related to an issue I've seen in production with docker - of a container being killed by the oom killer... But only on server boot.

<comment><USER9> Maybe. We've had serious problems with this, mostly with mongodb but other stuff as well.Java 10 is making an effort to fix this but I hate Java, and really it's a kernel/userland linux issue as you can't expect software not to request cache memory that it doesn't know exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Genuine question: how many startups are using Java now? is this dealing with older sites that are stuck with Java on the server, or are there genuinely many new deployments of Java-based systems out there?

<comment><USER11> I am at an early stage startup which is using Java (and Kotlin) on the server- side. There are various reasons for this, most of them pragmatic, but also some technical ones. Pragmatic reasons:

\- Many engineers know Java to at least an intermediate level, so they can be productive quicker (and hiring is easier)

\- We had some existing libraries written in Java, so integrating them with the web platform was much easier if we went down the JVM route

\- Java is the language most familiar to members of the startup (including me, although I also have experience in RoR, Kotlin, ObjectiveC and JavaScript)

Technical:

\- Java is generally very performant and running on the JVM means we don't generally have to worry about platform specific issues (there are well known exceptions of course e.g. file path issues)

\- The language itself is at a reasonable level of abstraction. It is strongly typed and IMO, writing a non-trivial backend in a dynamically typed language is a sub-optimal choice. It has a huge ecosystem of robust, battle tested libraries that are indispensable to us (e.g. JGraphT). There is a huge community - you are unlikely to run into 'uncharted' territory

\- It is popular to hate on Java but it really isn't that bad a language, especially if you aim to follow guidelines like those in Effective Java (probably my favourite programming book) e.g. avoiding mutable state and side- effects. It will never be as good as a modern language like Kotlin (data classes are my favourite feature there), but it is good enough

\- The server frameworks available are seriously robust and 'just work'

\- There is always the option of using alternative JVM languages (we use Kotlin for a large part of the backend)

In summary, we are 6 months into developing the web platform, progress is rapid, and we have no regrets (yet) about the technology choices. IMO, sometimes boring is best.

<comment><USER10> I think people must think I hate Java. I don't. I think it's great and I love Spring, though I have been mostly programming in C++ so haven't touched Java in a long while personally.

I'm more concerned with the copyright status of Java APIs. Can you really be sure that you will be safe from Oracle's clutches?

<comment><USER12> > I'm more concerned with the copyright status of Java APIs

Building something using OpenJDK using Java APIs shouldn't get you in any trouble.

What got Google in trouble with Oracle was that they copied and re-implemented all of Java's APIs. Are you planning on doing something similar?

<comment><USER10> Funny, the WINE project does this.

<comment><USER12> So does ReactOS.

Only both projects are pretty pointless to sue since they aren't making any money.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Steam stopped me from pirating games and enjoy the sweet DRM kool-aid - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/07/05/how-steam-stopped-me-from-pirating-games-and-enjoy-the-sweet-drm-kool-aid/ <comment><USER2> I've used a Steam a little over the last couple of years (bought maybe 3 or 4 games), but with this recent summer sale I've added another 15-20 games to my collection, and all for around $60 total. When the price is right, I'm very happy to use a service like this, despite the DRM. The user experience beats anything else out there, including going to the local mall and buying a game boxed.

The key is the price though. With Steam games, I lose the ability to sell the game on after I'm finished it, and publishers of all kinds (music, movies, ebooks, videogames) need to understand that I'm not going to pay them the same (or more) for something that doesn't give me the same rights as the physical media.

The policy of certain publishers to charge considerably more for the same game in different regions (in my case Australia - see e.g. the price of Mass Effect 2 in Aus here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/clwk1/steam_final_da...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/clwk1/steam_final_day_borderlands_sid_meiers/c0ti2lt)) is also something I'm not going to tolerate. I didn't buy _any_ of the games in the Steam sale that were priced higher in this country, so those publishers lost out.

I presume that this is due to the way publishing rights are apportioned internationally, and I've seen similar problems afflict other media (particularly ebooks, where the availability of a particular Kindle title varies a lot depending on whether you're in the UK, US or Aus). Again, publishers need to understand that consumers really couldn't give a toss about this sort of thing: we just want to buy their product, not have to worry about some international publishing agreement bullshit. If somebody can't buy something on Amazon/Steam/iTunes/whatever in their region, that's driving them towards the pirates, not towards the locally-published version.

<comment><USER3> > Again, publishers need to understand that consumers really couldn't give a > toss about this sort of thing: we just want to buy their product, not have > to worry about some international publishing agreement bullshit.

Firmly agree. This nonsense is a relic from an earlier age - back in the day, you'd sell the rights to a book to a local publisher/distributor. Back then, an American publishing house might have minimal contacts in Australia, so you'd license or sell to an Australian company with better local contacts and an understanding of the local market.

Mind you, this dates back to before long distance calls were possible, let alone the internet, and it made sense back then. Now it's mostly just hassle, nonsense, and bureaucracy. It'll eventually get more sensible, either because the old guard will wake up or some new players will emerge to eat their lunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What gets me about Steam are the extra layers of DRM crud games get layered with by publishers. I recently purchased Arkham Asylum in a sale; to play it, I need Steam, GfWL and SecuROM activation. I understand that in this instance Steam is merely the distribution tool, and that the extra DRM is installed by the publisher for retail sales, but it sure is a pain in the arse to get the game loaded.

The same could be said of GTA IV (Steam, Rockstar Social Club, GfWL) or Riddick (TAGES). I wish publishers would just give up on these other activation methods altogether.

<comment><USER5> Also note that if you pickup the add ons for GTA IV then you get to download the game twice(sure connections are fast these days but an extra 16GB really?). It doesn't integrate with GTA IV. So if you load up GTA IV and click on the expansion pack it takes you to a screen to buy it and vice versa.

<comment><USER6> Yes, you don't get the two episodes as DLC over Steam, you get the standalone SKU "Episodes from Liberty City". Just the same as if you bought the EfLC retail box on PC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At work, a typical response I've received upon mentioning that I get most of my games through Steam is "Oh. Isn't that the one with DRM?"

At first, this threw me; I wasn't even aware that there was DRM on Steam. Well, of course I intuitively knew it, but I never associated it with the issues that people usually complain about regarding DRM.

I've never had the DRM get in my way... My experience with iTunes has been that when a bad bump on an airplane toasted my external hard drive and lost me every piece of legitimately paid for music and every legally purchased TV episode on it, I would never be able to download those purchases again. Steam, on the other hand, has let me download the same game as many times as I've found necessary, external to external, computer to computer.

<comment><USER8> Apple doesn't advertise the fact that they do keep a list of your purchases. If you call them you should be able to get them to let you re-download all the content you have bought through ITMS.

IMHO, Apple should be putting a feature like this front and center, but my guess is that the labels are against it. Who else wants you to buy the same song first on vinyl, then tape, then CD, then digital, then...

<comment><USER9> > Apple doesn't advertise the fact that they do keep a list of your purchases. > If you call them you should be able to get them to let you re-download all > the content you have bought through ITMS.

yeah but sadly:

1\. the list of stuff bought is pretty well hidden, and it's a pain to get back to the media from there. Steam gives you your library front and center, and from there it's a right and a left click to reinstall

2\. for everything other than apps, you can't just re-download the stuff you lost. You have to re-buy it. That sucks. A lot. Here's hoping that improves with a hypothetical iTunes 10 / iTunes Cloud.

<comment><USER10> You can re-download stuff other than apps, but you have to contact apple. It's an open secret that they'll modify your account to let you re-download.

<comment><USER9> Ah yeah, forgot to point that out, but in any case it's a pretty sucky experience. There isn't a big button saying "re-download EVERYTHING" and boom everything you ever bought on iTunes gets requeued.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it's true, it is a really crap user experience. Considering the miniscule cost of downloading a song, it really ought to be free to re- download.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something interesting about Steam - it is a business model that creates a software distribution business without leveraging copyright. The guys at Valve have taken responsibility for their business model, rather than insisting that the government do it. Positive.

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember back in 2003 when steam came out along with the release of CS v1.6.

The whole community complained for a long time, setting up private v1.5 servers and doing anything in their power to avoid steam.

The naysayers had their points, but now the bloated software,buggy friends list and LAN party issues have morphed into a model content distribution network making tons and tons of revenue. Who'd a thought?

Valve probably knew this all along.

<comment><USER13> Steam _also_ had at least a couple orders of magnitude more problems with crashing, corrupting files, and as it was new the (sometimes incorrect) account banning had a _lot_ of weight. It's much better now, and look what's happened: people actually _support_ it.

Valve may have "known it all along", and it's a _huge_ thing to attempt, so I give them a lot of slack for their earlier problems. But it's succeeding today in large part because it's not a steaming P.O.S. like it was when it started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So if they make obtaining games legitimately _easier_ than pirating and make sure that the DRM doesn't needlessly hassle the end user, people will do that instead?

Stop the presses.

<comment><USER14> So -4 then? Was it because I advocated a form of DRM (and all DRM is bad m'kay), endorsed Steam even though lots of people dislaike it, or just used too much sarcasm because I thought this was self-evident to this crowd?

Steam seams like a faltering step in the right direction. Its quite a bit better than the "cripple the whole experience and make the user stand on his head while playing our game" DRM that's included in too many games today. Its not perfect but for the first time, moral judgments aside, it makes obtaining and playing a game as easy as pirating it. Its good to see people warming to this and validating the model.

<comment><USER15> Too much sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The question is, what's the point of the DRM once you have something like Steam? The DRM is not actually preventing people from pirating the games; you can still download them from Torrent sites. And you can prevent people from playing online if they haven't paid without any DRM; you just keep track of that on the server side.

So, by still including DRM, you are limiting users freedom, installing crap on their machines that they don't want, for no particularly good reason. The essential part to keep people buying your games instead of going to torrents is not the DRM; it's offering a good service that's competitive with the torrents. The convenience of fast downloads, of being able to reinstall the game on a new machine without keeping track of physical media and keys. And with a service like Steam, you can offer more than that, such as a nice option for online play, tournaments, leaderboards, and the like, updates that add value and keep your interest in older games.

While some people are just so cheap that they'll go with the torrent no matter what, I think there are a lot of people who would be willing to buy DRM free games if they offer a compelling enough experience. The reason that media loses sales to piracy is that they offer so much of a worse experience than just doing a search and a download. See iTunes, for example. The music isn't DRMed any more, and it's the largest music retailer in the world; it offers a wide selection and easy download and no crappy DRM hassles.

Steam is not successful because of the DRM. It's successful because of the service and convenience. They could drop the DRM, and be even better off than they are today, and not have to spend all the time and money writing the DRM that will just be cracked anyhow.

<comment><USER17> > The question is, what's the point of the DRM once you have something like > Steam?

These decisions aren't made by programmers or people who otherwise deal with _facts_.

The _point_ is that when your boss's boss asks why it's showing up on TPB, your boss can say "Look, we put DRM in it. We did the best we could. With more funding we could make the DRM system better."

The next project gets a few more hires (probably only DRM-related on paper), your boss practiced CYA, his boss practiced CYA, and everybody's doing great except the legal consumers of the product, who nobody really cares about anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Steam's pragmatic approach to DRM is okay with me. They make the whole flow from finding the game, purchasing, and launching easy and straight forward. It's one of the rare instances the Management is a two way street. I don't need to keep physical copies of the games or track the serial numbers. I can move from computer to computer and the games that are enabled for my account are available. I'm really impressed that they don't charge extra for games that run on OS X, that was originally purchased for Windows.

What does irk me still is the third party publishers on Steam that use region lockouts. Steam's DRM does make it easy for publishers to not allow games like Modern Warfare 2 to be sold in Japan. I understand it was licensed to a publisher local in Japan and that is why Steam can not distribute. But this crosses the line of my tolerance. Same with other media such as music and videos. I wish publishers would set a global price, based on one of the major currencies, and just let us purchase and use in any region.

<comment><USER19> You might be interested to know that they unofficially tolerate players having someone in another country (usually the US) buy the game and gift it to them, as long as the middleman isn't making money off of it (only equal reimbursement). If you're interested in getting the US version of Modern Warfare 2 (or any other game) via Steam, contact this guy: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/cklqm/steam_day_7_ma...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/cklqm/steam_day_7_mass_effect_2_shatter_the_void/c0t87rn)

Obviously this isn't a justification for their actions, but it is an available workaround.

<comment><USER20> I bought $170 worth of games today through a friend in the US. :)

The only thing _I_ don't like is PC games are stupidly complicated with add ons, expansions, packs, chapters, bla bla bla. I don't have time to keep up with gaming to know what I need, what order I should do it in etc.

<comment><USER19> That's why Valve's TF2 updates, combined with Steam, are great (they had one today, coincidentally). You can get new features without lifting a finger :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is also "good old games" ( www.gog.com ) - steam like site that sells old games without DRM and tuned to run in modern OSes. Sorry for advertising, I'm not connected to them in any way, just like this company (they made The Witcher) and wanted to promote DRM less online software selling.

</comment><comment><USER22> Steam is awesome.

I used to never play PC games, and when I did I usually pirated them for convenience and simply because I couldn't legitimately purchasing the PC games I play (many of them are older and no longer in stores).

However, since this Steam sale came around I've been addicted. I ended up buying like 6 games with an average price of about $5 a game. It's just easier than pirating and it's cheap very easy just to click the buy button and charge my credit card.

Overall it's a great way to distribute new PC games and it definitely keeps the income coming in (although it might not be as much) for older games that no longer get shelf space in brick and mortar retail stores.

<comment><USER23> Might not be much but it's a hell of a lot more than the $0 they get for pirated copies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Steam doesn't even feel like DRM. The hallmark of DRM is always that there's some thing you run into that you want to do but can't: you can't play your music on THAT device, you can't convert your video to THAT format.

But the only thing I want to do with PC games is play them, and on any PC that I want to play them on. Steam lets me do that. It's copy protection, no doubt, but it's a bargain where I actually win in the exchange.

<comment><USER25> The main price is waiting for steam to login and initialize before you can start loading the game.

<comment><USER9> Offline mode works if you want to go faster and/or need it though. Didn't work a few years ago, but works like a charm nowadays, it's a pleasure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "In order to counter piracy.... It's this sort of scheme that forces people to pirate games."

For publishers to understand why restricting rights of their customers is bad for them, they need to understand this. Steam, and other systems like it are the future. Those who do not understand this will (and should) be swept under the rug.

<comment><USER9> > For publishers to understand why restricting rights of their customers is > bad for them, they need to understand this. Steam, and other systems like it > are the future.

Steam _does_ restrict customer rights (can't resell games for instance). The truly important thing is that the rights your DRM scheme restricts should not be rights the user cares for or wants to use.

At the end of the day, experience is king, and Steam's great because the experience is better than piracy's.

<comment><USER27> I know you aren't arguing against Steam. I just wanted to expand/respond to a part of your comment.

Steam does require giving up certain rights you'd have if you had purchased the game from a store, true. However, it also provides you rights you wouldn't otherwise have. For example, I can reinstall games without having to worry about finding that CD/CD Key. If I lose the game DVD, I can't play it anymore. With Steam, I now have that right.

Steam might take away rights, but in doing so, it rewards me with other rights that are if not equally as valuable, are more valuable then the rights they are removing.

<comment><USER9> > However, it also provides you rights you wouldn't otherwise have. For > example, I can reinstall games without having to worry about finding that > CD/CD Key.

That's not really a right, that's mostly convenience.

> If I lose the game DVD, I can't play it anymore.

Depends on the game.

> With Steam, I now have that right.

unless you lose your Steam password that is.

<comment><USER27> > That's not really a right, that's mostly convenience.

Call it what you will, it's very valuable. Of course, if I have a right to play the game because I bought it, and lose the CD key, I've now technically lost that right.

> Depends on the game.

I'm sorry, but the majority of games you can't. Yes, their are exceptions. Should I preface everything I said with a paragraph of legalese explaining that their are exceptions.

> unless you lose your Steam password that is.

That's not correct. You have to lose your steam password and choose not to recover it, which is much easier then if you lose your CD Keys.

What was the point of your response?

<comment><USER9> > Call it what you will, it's very valuable.

I'll just call it what it is.

> That's not correct.

Of course it is.

> You have to lose your steam password and choose not to recover it, which is > much easier then if you lose your CD Keys.

Or be unable to, which is pretty easy

> What was the point of your response?

That not only those are not rights, they're definitely not steam-exclusive either.

<comment><USER27> > Of course it is.

No, it's not. I've lost my password before. I've been able to recover/change it, and reinstall my games.

> That not only those are not rights, they're definitely not steam-exclusive > either.

Then you failed to make your second point.

<comment><USER9> > No, it's not. I've lost my password before. I've been able to recover/change > it, and reinstall my games.

And just because you have been able to recover your password you cannot fathom that it might be unrecoverable?

It's very simple: lose access to contact email address, be fucked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just want to point out quick that what's so awesome about Steam is it's apparent longevity. They provide the convenience of the App Store: you see something, 2-or-3 clicks and it's yours, but the greatest value that Steam offers is the fact that THE GAMES YOU BUY ARE ALWAYS THERE. 5 years down the road, you will still be able to download and play the games you have bought, onto a different computer with possibly a completely different OS, all patched up. It's in Steam's best business interest to continue and grow and maintain a presence, possibly forever, so they will always be there, and the game you have bought and paid for the one time, you will always have, always. Try and say that about a physical copy or the stupid App store.

</comment><comment><USER29> I installed a dual-boot of Vista so I could install Steam and play BioShock. I'd love Steam if it didn't crash every twenty minutes or so. Granted, it could be Vista...I had problems with Call of Duty 4 as well.

I _really, really_ wish a gaming virtual machine would catch on. Of course it won't because it would defeat platform lock-in, but one can dream, right? Rebooting Ubuntu into Windows just to catch a 30 minute break gets old _fast_.

<comment><USER30> It does sound like a hardware problem. It could, however, also be the game, which is corrupt.

Fret not, there's an app^H^H^H solution for that:

\- Right click the game in your games list \- Select properties \- Select "local files" tab \- Click "Check integrity of game cache" (or so)

This can take some time, but will re-download corrupted game components. I ususally have to do this with Dirt, when it dies ungracefully on me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't wait until something like this comes out for my Xbox. I can't tell you the number of times I've been bored enough to shell out $60 bucks for a game I heard was good but was way too lazy (or slightly too inebriated) to drive to the store.

Sometimes I feel like companies just don't want my money.

<comment><USER24> This exists. It's how I bought Mass Effect for the 360.

<comment><USER32> Website/explanation please? I wasn't aware you could buy non-Arcade games digitally.

<comment><USER24> [http://marketplace.xbox.com/en- US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-...](http://marketplace.xbox.com/en- US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d5307e8/?of=7)

Nothing much to it. Microsoft has been selling catalog titles via Xbox Live for a while now.

edit: Here's a list of all the games available for full download. [http://marketplace.xbox.com/en- US/games/catalog.aspx?d=4&...](http://marketplace.xbox.com/en- US/games/catalog.aspx?d=4&r=-1&g=-1&mt=0&ot=7&sb=2&rl=0&p=1)

<comment><USER32> Thanks! wasn't aware of that. I'll have to check it out at home as it's blocked here at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's another online games store that deals with older games: www.gog.com aka Good Old Games. What's interesting is that it doesn't have DRM.

</comment><comment><USER34> i owned counter-strike: source for windows. i was AMAZED that i didn't have to purchase it for mac.

this particular kool aid is delicious.</comment>


Challenging the MLS Monopoly - <AUTHOR> http://quandyfactory.com/blog/31/challenging_the_mls_monopoly

<comment><USER2> I hate to tell you this, but it has NOTHING to do with technology or even individual agents. The closed MLS has everything to do with politics. Period.

The biggest brokers in an area will monopolize 60%+ of all the data in a single MLS. When they have control over the listings, they have control over the MLS. If they threaten to leave an MLS, the MLS is worthless, and one company wins.

So, the MLS compromises. It does the bidding of the biggest listing offices and everyone else suffers.

I speak from first hand experience as a vendor in multiple markets. An open mls would be mind blowing and wonderful, bit it's not a matter of setting up a nice website, it's a matter of beating through the bureaucracy.

<comment><USER3> Seems like the same political problems that are in place with Ticketmaster. Perhaps if someone figure out how to beat through this bureaucracy they can figure that one out, too.

And make lots of money.

<comment><USER4> There's actually a startup that's local to me that's fighting that fight.

What's interesting is that they haven't tried to go after big names at first... it's surely more of a long tail kind of thing. They started off only doing small, local venues, but they're doing so well that they're naturally starting to pick up bigger and bigger ones.

I'll be excited to see Ticketmaster go. I don't know of anynone who enjoys dealing with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen the effects of this monopoly even before the Internet age, and this is a pretty accurate article. The data on the MLS is not rocket science, it could be trivially reimplemented in a lot better ways than it has been.

In defense of real estate agents, however, they aren't necessarily willing participants in this fiasco. For instance, a city's real estate board can charge agents fees (and really, really, _really_ ridiculous fees) for access to the service. And there's no choice: it's the only way to be a realtor. Agents suck it up like just another cost of doing business, but the reality is that the real estate boards are acting extremely unethically.

<comment><USER6> _"And there's no choice: it's the only way to be a realtor."_

Important nitpick: Realtor is a registered trademark of the National Association of Realtors. Not all real estate agents are Realtors. It's yet another racket in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a real estate agent, I agree with the author's point, especially about the technology. I not only pay hundreds of dollars per year, but technologically they still can't even keep up with basic advancements such as making the mls work in firefox or safari. The problem, as far as I can tell, is not from individual agents trying to protect their racket, but from our regional and national associations and their somewhat opaque partnerships with private businesses.

For example, our national association doesn't even own Realtor.com; they made an apparently permanent agreement with a private company which charges us additional fees for "enhanced" listings.

The other problem is that the MLS's are all controlled regionally, and it's not so much about the technology as it is about the bureaucracy. While the author makes an excellent point, many are currently attempting it but it's not easy. Companies such as Redfin seem to be slowly getting there. As an agent, I'd be the first to support a free, nationwide MLS, but I don't know if it's something that can be solved by technology alone.

<comment><USER8> As someone who worked for an agency supplying a few hundred realtors across 6 different MLSes with web development, I can also testify to the _utter_ technical incompetence of at least one of the major suppliers (who shall remain unnamed) of back-ends for hundreds of MLSes.

I noticed a bug in our CSV import one day and I discovered that they were quoting, but not escaping quotes _in any way_. Thereby making it possible for any realtor to inject whatever the data they wanted for anyone else's listings either before or after theirs (depending on how the data importers resolved conflicts).

This was a _huge_ security hole affecting probably hundreds of thousands of listings nationwide, and you know what their developer support said to me? They actually sent me a suggested workaround tailored to the particular instance of corrupted data that I had encountered. When I explained to them the ramifications of this to their business they simply ignored me.

Damn I'm glad I got out of that game.

<comment><USER9> "Hello, this is the front desk."

"Hi, I'm in room 118 and I smell smoke."

"We'll send up some air freshener right away, sir."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I handle listing data ingestion and distribution at HotPads.com, so I deal with some of these problems all the time. There hasn't been a single complete game changer in this space yet, and with the way things are currently progessing I think the solution to the MLS problem will come as a combination of MLSes learning to play nice (we see quite a few distributing their data across multiple sites) and agents and brokers signing up with distribution services, listing their properties on more open sites, or handling their own distribution directly. We have listing feeds with examples of all of these cases.

</comment><comment><USER11> We are in the real estate and have been pondering this problem for years.

It is not a technical problem, and there is no technical solution.

It's easy to make a better database, but it isn't useful if it isn't full of data. And you won't get lots of data because the network effects are too strong. It has been tried many times.

Besides that, you must realize that MLS's make most of their revenue from MLS fees; if they didn't run the MLS then they wouldn't have a very big budget, and many people would lose their jobs. MLS's have strong relationships with their members (agents and brokers). There is no incentive for anyone close to the data sources to support such a thing.

To your point about making something "so much better" that they'd use a new system anyway, read this: [http://www.inman.com/opinion/guest- perspective/2009/11/10/th...](http://www.inman.com/opinion/guest- perspective/2009/11/10/the-coming-civil-war-in-real-estate)

</comment><comment><USER12> The MLS pains are a symptom of the broader question, "do we still need human realtors?"

Sadly, Foxtons US is dead ([http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN27422652200709...](http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2742265220070927)) and ZipRealty has been around for 7+ years without revolutionizing the industry. There must be a deeper explanation than "Realtors make 6% a sale for accessing a database."

My hypothesis is "rational, well-informed market decisions" would ensure few purchases and sales ever close. With so much on the line (life savings, huge debt, negotiation anxieties, moving uncertainties), normal people simply can't handle the stress without some hand-holding.

As a licensed agent, I've personally had plenty of cases where I knew I found the clients a steal, but I had to spend enormous amounts of energy and time convincing them take action (and before someone else beats them to it).

</comment><comment><USER13> The National Association of Realtors will and has done everything to protect the MLS, which they manage and make millions of dollars from. The NAR is the largest American trade union and 3rd largest lobby

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Realtor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Realtors). <http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php>

</comment><comment><USER14> "Make this extra-easy via functionality that auto-populates MLS when an agent lists a property on OSLS."

This violates my local MLS' TOS. Pretty much everything violates the MLS TOS. Did you know that agents can't put their contact info on their MLS listings?

</comment><comment><USER15> What about the idea of making it easier to sell a house using a "For Sale By Owner" then let more ppl list their own homes on craigslist or wherever they want. If I was trying to sell my home I would want it on every single site out I could get it on. It seems like what would aid this is if there were about 10 standard contracts that everyone agreed to use. You could research it and know all about the type of contract you were going to use - about like learning a software license. Then any more give and take is just worked out in the price.

<comment><USER11> That's exactly what we do... <http://www.neybor.com>.

There are many companies that offer such a service today, and it is starting to help. Syndication is what will eventually allow the MLS monopoly to be broken I think...

Five years ago probably 95% of homes found by buyers online were found via MLS search sites. But syndication has started to shift this number lower and distribute it among _many_ other sites (trulia, zillow, craigslist, etc etc).

As the % of online shoppers viewing true MLS data drops, brokers will continue to syndicate their listings to other sites, which will accelerate the shift away from MLS reliance even further.

After a while, the monopoly will be broken and then you will start to see radical shifts like you describe where real estate agents are used for their professional services -- advice, negotiation, paperwork, and expertise, and NOT as an overpriced access fee to the MLS data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recently heard about the business of teaching people how to form syndicates to buy "short sale" homes and then flip those homes for a profit. (Short sale == sell house for less than the loan value.) If you pay $$ to a guru you can get standardized contracts, hand holding, etc. Example blog post from someone in this area: <http://cawholesaledeals.com/blog/tag/short-sale-syndication/>

Leaving aside the morality of these gurus...

Wonder if this would be a thin edge of the wedge area to start with aggregating data on house sales? People are already meeting in person and swapping information about where are the sales, which ones do they want to syndicate, so you have less of a bootstrapping problem. You could also provide ways for people to signal interest in a particular home deal, or provide a commission to people who bring in data on a home that is later successfully syndicated/sold even if the reporter isn't in on the deal. Maybe there are other approaches. Then grow from that segment to more real estate data if the model proves out.

</comment><comment><USER17> As other comments have stated, it is so much more than a simple technical problem. An entire web of "ethics" rules and well-funded politicians presents a formidable barrier to change. For true blood-boiling outrage, read the very sharp analysis of how the industry is rigged in this report submitted to the FTC a few years ago: [http://www.savvybroker.com/Nine-Pillars-Citadel- aRealEstateC...](http://www.savvybroker.com/Nine-Pillars-Citadel- aRealEstateCart.pdf)

As technologists, try reading each of the points in this report as network partitions, and design a solution to route around the information block. There are various approaches available now to bypass some of these rules.

Alas, they can rewrite the rules, too, as necessary. For example, in Texas realtors were taking bulk listings from builders and investors for a flat fee of $150 and putting the data in the MLS, but nothing else. Since this was a direct attack on the semi-fixed price of 6% commissions, the Texas Association of Realtors got their politician lackeys to pass a new law, requiring "minimum professional services" from all Texas real estate license holders. This fixed price posting still goes on a bit, but not in bulk anymore. Any technical routing around of the MLS must expect the Borg to counterattack.

The realtor associations even violate their own rules, and/or keep their rules vague, so when the time comes they slap everyone around by giving them days to comply or they are cut off from MLS. (That cuts off an entire brokerage when one agent is out of compliance.) With that kind of career-ending leverage, they are quite effective in keeping the sharecroppers down on the farm, and paid up on their dues.

I have never been a realtor, but I did follow a carefully laid out plan to be licensed and still avoid the Borg, which the realtor association ignored completely. Feel free to contact me if you want to share stories and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious to know if Ryan has spoken to any of the local (I live in the same town) agents about the lock-in to see what they think? I don't know a huge amount about the industry, but it has some interesting dynamics.

There are a handful of major franchises (Re/Max, Century 21, CBRE on the commercial side) that folks sign on to. Why are such companies so enticing to agents? Is there a benefit to doing the same thing as every other agent in your region, or is the barrier to standalone entry to the market too high?

I presume that the franchise groups are heavily wedded to the existing MLS stuff, even if they have their own separate listing facilities (certainly the largest Re/Max group here puts all their listings on their own website).

I should talk to one of my neighbours about it, as I have some interesting ideas :)

</comment><comment><USER19> While I agree with making this information more open, claiming that real estate agents are getting their percentage from just accessing the database is wrong. There is a significant element of service that I have experienced that transcends just having the listing. I have worked with one real estate agent for multiple houses now and gladly pay a percentage to understand the flavor neighborhood, the history of the house, getting the transaction done, helping with the move.

If the information would be free, then I would certainly be ok with paying less, but there is more to the real estate service than just the data.

I would imagine you are familiar with Zillow?

</comment><comment><USER20> What about redfin.com?

<comment><USER10> Redfin is great, but it only solves part of this problem. In its current incarnation it still has to play by many MLS rules and does not open the data past users of its own site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> Puts private sales on an even footing with brokered sales by legitimizing non-brokered transations.

If you're trying to get realtors to buy in, why would you make this a goal? Private sales == less commission for the relators == less profit.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, that's a relief.

I read the headline as meaning "Masters in Library Science", and was expecting an anti-librarian screed.

<comment><USER23> And I expected something about a sickness that combines Multiple Sclerosis and ALS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> a shit-ass industry populated by incompetent sociopaths.</comment>


Is automating recruitment saving you time or losing you the best talent? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seed.jobs/2014/09/automating-recruitment-to-save-time/

<comment><USER2> I was recently searching for work, and one process took automated recruitment to a whole new level.

I was told I had a phone interview and given a number to ring, so I did and was horrified to discover my interviewer was in fact a robot.

Turns out there are services online that let you as a company submit questions you want to ask and then give the applicant a 30 second window to record an answer, which is then submitted to the company seeking the new employee.

Suffice to say, I didn't get that job. 30 seconds is nowhere near enough time to even consider your answer, let alone sum it up in a clear and concise manner.

Not saying I'm "The Best Talent" but I can certainly see the recruiting company having problems hiring by using such an automated system as that. As the article states, it's called 'HUMAN resources' for a reason.</comment>