If you confide in the liberation the Internet grants you and many billions of users, and you have intentions of contributing anything to it, you should be mindful of licensing anything you put on it. Anything at all.
If you’re authoring something non-trival, that can be seen as valuable for anyone out there and you’re sticking it up on the net, you should be mindful of the restrictions that will automatically be placed upon it if you DON’T license it. Copyright law’s powers are incredibly wide and its breadth continues to expand regularly. If you author ANYTHING, yes, ANYTHING, it will be automatically restricted under copyright. No registration required. Typically, all you would “need” is a simple statement that it is copyrighted to you (e.g., “© 2022 Anonymous”), but even this isn’t necessary. If you publish anything without a word about its use, you will automatically be given the right to restrict any reproduction or redistribution of that work.
That doesn’t sound very cool and neat and liberating as the Internet should be, yeah? You’d want your friends or anyone who could benefit off of your work to be able to use it with less restrictions, yes? Well, tough luck, because if you don’t specify those privileges, legally, they simply can’t. If you state what privileges you’d want your work to have, and if you don’t do so in an all-encompassing manner, you can open yourself up to legal loopholes which could screw you over in the future. Hence why there’s a proliferation of legally sound licenses out there that offer to help you with these sorts of things.
Many people ignore or disregard licenses, and in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to think about this and all. Unfortunately, copyright is a persistent and insidious threat, and its power continues to grow. While the chance is often slight in smaller communities for it to burn you, there’s really no harm in just slapping on a license that ensures there is no legal confusion over a work’s use.
The question is then, what licenses should you be using? Let’s talk about licenses, their distinctions, and what sorts of works merit what licenses.
Software
If you’re not familiar with “free software”, or software that is free. In the context of software, “free” implies that the software possesses the four freedoms, which are:
- you can run the software in any way you wish;
- you can modify the software in any way you wish, with source code being a prerequisite;
- you can share the software with others;
- you can share software you’ve modified with others.
Unlike other creative works, there is an imperative for software to be freed. Software is in a unique boat concerning copyright law because it is not just a “creative” work (i.e., its source code being a form of literature in some way), but it can be used in a practical or mechanical way to do things.
You might’ve heard about a man named Theodore Kasczynski. He wrote this great book called “Industrial Society and its Future” which, among MANY other things, its key point is that technology can be used to impact your freedom. If you live in a rock you might believe this, but many other people are starting to wake up to the ways in which technology can negatively impact you, whether it be outright malware or subtly chip away at your privacy. I’ve heard a few tales from family members and even strangers that they left their phone hanging somewhere, and upon having a conversation, words from that conversation were used to send them targeted advertisements. That doesn’t sound very liberating, does it?
Software should serve the users, not the developers. If it servers the developers first and foremost, oftentimes, it can and will be used to exploit you. It’s not just targeted advertising, of course - it’s data collection, subtle psychologically techniques that spur addiction, microtransactions, locking down your system, preventing unauthorized copying, and more. Thus, there is an imperative for software to be free. Software that is not free, or proprietary, should be used with great consideration. Proprietary software may not directly affect your freedom; there may be harmless proprietary programs, but if not, they are certainly harmful in principle, in the context of their presence in society.
I’m not going to hate you if you write some software that you poured you heart into and make it proprietary (i.e., a lot of commercial video games), and sure, it may be harmless, but ultimately I will bemoan the fact that it just won’t respect me or my freedom. Concerning video games, you can make “fake” solutions to this problem (i.e., a modding API) to meet half-way, but unless you just make your software fully free I still will feel restricted and uncomfortable using it.
If you’re a a current or future software developer and agree with these statements, what license SHOULD you use then to be free?
Copyleft vs. Cuck Licenses
A license can be free in the strict sense (i.e., it meets those four freedoms as listed above), but what “free” truly means is in up to debate, and this debate materializes in the form of two camps of software licenses; copyleft licenses, and non-copyleft licenses (or so called “cuck” licenses, more on that later).
A copyleft license is one that says any derivative work must maintain the same license. If a bit of software is under copyleft, then any work which uses code from that software must be redistributed under the same conditions, thus guaranteeing the freedoms of that original work is maintained. An example of a free, copyleft license is the GNU General Public License (GPL) v3.
What if the license does not have this copyleft clause? Thus it is a cuck license. A cuck licensed program may be free, but it is vulnerable to being used in a proprietary program, which may jeopardize the freedoms of the ussers. A cuckold is someone who willingly lets their sexual partner be used by another; a cuck licenser is someone who willings lets their free software be abused by another. I’ll let Luke Smith explain it better for you.
What to use?
I recommend the use of the GNU General Public License v3 (GNU GPLv3) for any non-trivial software you release. It is a free, copyleft license that concisely eliminates any potential injustices users of your software may face, and ensures that it will maintain their freedom.
There is a debate concerning something like the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPLv3), which ensures that software served by a server must also have published source code. Unless you are running software over a server, this isn’t really necessary, but it may ensure additional freedom. Your mileage may vary.
Creative Works
Let’s discuss licensing for…everything else, Software is an important exception to my licensing recommendation, concerning its practical applications. Unlike software, however, art can’t be used to directly exploit people (at least, as far as I know of), so there is a different rationale for it.
For art, I recommend the Creative Commons Zero (CC0)) license; a license that effectively renders your work as public domain and ensures your work is as unencumbered as possible, and with a very permissive license as backup in case your country does not recogize public domain dedications.
Why not something else?
As your resident schizophrenic, I’ve held imaginary debates in my head concerning people challenging my choice of license; why I’ve chosen the one that ensures that it my works licensed under it have as little restrictions as possible. There are benefits to copyright, after all; that’s why it exists, as selfish as it can be!
The Creative Commons organization maintains a wide list of licenses; some free, some not free, with modular clauses, simplifying the process for licensing, as each license is basically one with these clauses added or subtracted:
- The “Attribution” (BY) clause; clarifies that the work cannot be reproduced without the author’s name (or pseudonym);
- The “Share Alike” (SA) clause; clarifies that the works making use of this work must be shared under the same restrictions (i.e., copyleft)
- The “Non-Commercial” (NC) clause; clarifies that your work cannot be used by others for profit, in a rather vaguely-defined manner;
- The “No Derivatives” (ND) clause; clarifies that your work cannot be modified or changed.
Just like free software, other creative works can also be free, meeting the same four freedoms (though without the “source code” caveat). Creative Commons hosts three free licenses, those being the CC0, CC-BY, the CC BY-SA, The NC and ND clauses both would make your work non-free, as they would restrict commercial users and users that modify the work respectively. Attributing the author and maintaing the licenses are trivial requirements, and they don’t take away any freedom whatsoever from anybody.
I’m perfectly content with anyone who chooses to license their works under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA; they’re both free licenses and I have no qualms with them. However, I prefer my works to be unencumbered as possible.
Attribution is a pleasant thing to have; it keeps your mind at ease, knowing that for anybody who’s used your work that they can trace its origins back. In this digital era, however, it being a requirement is rather trivial; if your work is notable enough, you can probably easily be found by others on the digital landscape. Trying to misattribute something is a nigh impossibility when there’s such a saturation of information on the internet. If your work really is that personal and notable, your name will be attached to it by default without the need of some attribution clause.
Share-alike is the copyleft clause for any free license. Keeping things free is respectable, but there’s really not a huge imperative for artistic works that merit being licensed under the Creative Commons license versus its nigh necessity for software. Having the license be consistent for the broader work the SA-claused work is attached to just often causes headaches. I’d rather just be grateful for any reuse of my work, not just ones meeting the same license criteria.
Takeaway
For software, I use GPLv3. There is a moral imperative for software to be free and to remain that way; a copyleft license such as the GPLv3 ensures as such. I’d also recommend the AGPLv3 as well.
For any artistic works, there is less reason for it to restrict its use in any way, as it can’t be used to cause grievance, and in accordance with that I recommend the Creative Commons Zero license. I employ this license as a sort of protest against copyright, and I believe artistic works should be wholly unencumbered from its shackles. Copyright is anti-social and counter to human nature and functions incredibly poorly in “spurring creativity”, as it’s been touted to do. By employing the license, I continue that tradition of the spread of culture, and hey, if any of this resonates with you, I hope you do so, too.