License for release songs
diaphragmwp <[email protected]> Wed, 1 Jul 2026 08:53:55 -0400 (EDT)
| Newsgroups | gmane.os.openbsd.misc |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hey, people. Interesting how in the entire history of the mailing list, this hasn't been brought up (with a (sensible) reply). Well, better late than never. Although I have to disclose that neither am I a lawyer or someone who has been involved with OpenBSD in any capacity. I am just stating my opinion for sake of. I have failed to find a license header on lyrics.html, pages about the FTP shares or anywhere else that would imply the release songs are covered under the license. This is equivalent to an all rights reserved, but may lead people to believe it's BSD 2/3 clause given it's "included with the OS" (not really), regardless of intention. While it's unlikely somebody will be exercising copyright over them, it limits usage across corporate contexts and may lead to people breaking terms of their hosting providers and such unknowingly. Possible solutions: - Explicitly add "all rights reserved" to lyrics.html (may upset someone) - Add a README file to /songs on FTP and a notice on lyrics.html stating the songs are part of BSD 2 clause licensed software - Add a LICENSE file to /songs on FTP and a notice on lyrics.html - Add licenses where applicable to individuals songs Now, if none of the artists of a specific song had their rights transferred or waived (even informally), this would need the headache of asking one of them to say "I hereby release...". And to know to do that in the first place involves cross referencing emails. Also, the BSD 2 clause license is a software license. It is perfectly fit to distribute assets as part of software, but if it's stated a song on it's own is "under BSD 2 clause", it won't be clear if a .ogg counts as "binary form". "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice" how? Add a robotic voice to the end of each song? The CC-BY licenses would be incompatible with BSD due to attribution to authors (despite lots of jurisdictions requiring such attribution regardless due to unwaivable moral rights). Best license I can think of is the EXPAT/"MIT" but s/software/work/: --- Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this work and associated documentation files (the "Work"), to deal in the work without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the work, and to permit persons to whom the work is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the work. THE WORK IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE WORK OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE WORK. --- Although the obvious problem with that is that the whole thing must now be included under funny internet videos and whatnot, since it's new and doesn't have a name most would recognize or look up online (like "EXPAT"). So maybe even public domain equivalent at this point..? If anyone has better suggestions, let me know. Although what should be considered is what the artists themselves want. Maybe they want "all rights reserved, enforced only case by case"? We don't know. Maybe best to ask... This very email is hereby released under that license. That's it for my workarounds of capitalism.