igemnace / dotfiles Goto Github PK

Why choose Unlicense in the first place?

I was a starry eyed developer publishing my first few projects on Github, and the uncomplicated, disinterested language of the Unlicense appealed to me.

Why change it now?

There are a few problems with the Unlicense that are well-known among the open source community. There is no single thing that triggered it for me -- more like a straw that finally broke the camel's back.

Here's a few resources from a web search to get you started on what these problems are:
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-is-wrong-with-the-unlicense
https://web.archive.org/web/20170301020915/https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/001386.html

The gist of it is: the freedoms that I wanted other people to enjoy can still be enjoyed with a good open source license like MIT. The ideological "get it from public domain, no strings attached" isn't there anymore, but the spirit of sharing is retained (in a more well-formed manner, even).

I've used code from your repo when it was Unlicensed. What happens to me?

Nothing. You may keep using that code, same as you did beforehand.

There are a few forces at play that all conspire to grant you freedom to use this software:

1. Once you've received this software with a previous license, you may continue using it in accordance with that license. That's what "perpetuity" in the Unlicense means.
2. Even if 1 weren't true, MIT wouldn't actually impose any further restriction, save one: a condition that the license and copyright statement be included if you redistribute it.
3. Even if 2 were a problem, I'm not inclined to go after anyone and get them in trouble for using my dotfiles. The spirit has always been to share with the community, however small.

Screenshots hosted by Github itself (e.g. from issues) are a better choice than an external image provider such as imgur because I can rely on my images being up as long as my repo is up. Imgur links might expire, leaving my README full of broken links.