Informal thoughts
In terms of how licences relate to my own work, the lectures related to licences have made me consider what sorts of licences I should be putting on my work when I publish it to git and whatnot. I think there are very little reasons for me to be so protective over some software that I make it completely closed source unless maybe I’m selling the licence to a company. I would probably used the licence chooser that Ken showed (hah) or choose a licence where if someone modifies my software they have to pay me if they make any money from it because I think that is the most fair way to do it (obviously depending on how useful my software it, I’m not going to copyright my pac man game)
Licences
General Public Licence
GPL is a copyleft licence that allows users to have access to the source code and do with it however they want. However, anything created from software using this licence must also have this licence i.e. you can’t sell a modified version of software using this licence. It was the first copyleft licence avaliable for general use.
MIT Licence
This is a licence that also allows unrestricted use of the software and modification of the software. If you want to modify the software and make it closed source, you must include the mit copyright licence. So basically its different to GPL becuase you can make any modifications to the code you make closed source, as long as you specifiy where it came from whereas when using GPL software you cannot make money off of any modifications. This is probably better for the world overall but I can imagine its frustrating for someone who put a lot of time into modification of source code and would like to profit off of that.
Collective conditions for re-use Licence
This is also a copyleft licence but it has a different sentiment to the ownership of software. People are allowed to modify the origial software/code/database but if they are using it to make money, they may be required to give back to the original author. The modified work must also not ‘contribute to oppressive arrangements of power, privilege and difference’ as judged by the author.
Hyppocratic licence
Like the hyppocratic oath, the software can be used and modified in any way, as long as it is not used to harm anyone. In all of these licences, there is stipulation about how the software can be used however I think it would be almost impossible to enforce this when put into practice. If a government is using your facial recognition software to target people to kill, how would you even know to sue them? And how would you get the money to sure them?
Public Domain
This describes anything that has no specific licence or rules that apply to the use of this thing. Also applies to things that are made before copyright exsited (although that is uncommon with software)
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