What license do you release your code under?

Partly curious, partly considering changing what license I use (to MIT).

Feel free to respond with why too.

I use/did use Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License because that's what turtle scripts sets it as.

Licenses detailed here: http://choosealicense.com/licenses/
More license information: http://choosealicense.com/

Please exclude code that you uses, only include the code that you have written yourself (or modified and re-licensed)

Straw Poll link: http://strawpoll.me/3832711

Also, don't happen to know the 'rules' on changing the license of code?
Edit: did a bit of googleing, if you own the copyright, you can change the license. You can't revoke the code from anyone who got it with the old license though.

Although I sometimes use a CC license it's often said it's not suitable for code, not exactly sure why, but there's probably some legal stuff I don't know about.

Generally what I want from a license is covered by a simple copyright, or on that site 'No License', but with a clause allowing people to distribute it.

Because Creative Commons themselves suggest not using them for software.

I use MIT for my ComputerCraft Lua code.

I don't specify a license, which I suppose effectively makes my code public domain. Sometimes I wonder whether that means someone could "steal" my code and send me a cease-and-desist or something to stop me from using/distributing it, but the thought is purely a theoretical exercise - no one's going to want to re-work my code into something else. Heck, hardly anybody wants to run it in the first place. ;)/>/>

Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, licenses are irrelevant. I need only pay attention to them when using other people's code.

Lupus590, on 09 March 2015 - 08:27 PM said:

Also, don't happen to know the 'rules' on changing the license of code?

That depends on the license it was first released under. Many licenses, for example, specify that if you wish to redistribute code (modified or verbatim), then you need to include a copy of the same license (or a later version of it).

For example, say you release code under a license saying you need to use the same license to redistribute, and that you can't prevent redistribution of redistributions. This means GPL code is incompatible with something like the iTunes store, for example.

Another thing I suppose is worth pointing out is that when you submit code to a project, odds are your code will fall under the license used by that project. I think. Again, it's not something I've thought much about, as I'm more interested in writing the code than I am in "owning" it.

I'm going to preface this post by stating that I'm not a lawyer.

My understanding is that unless you specify a license, you haven't given permission for anyone to do anything with your code. You, as the copyright holder, have all rights reserved by default. I'm not sure what the implications are when you implicitly give license to people to view the code by putting it on pastebin/github/etc. without actually licensing it formally.

As for changing the license on a piece of code, my understanding is (again, not a copyright expert) that as the copyright holder, you could do whatever you like with your code. As for copies of the code obtained under previous licenses, I have no idea what the implications are for those people after you change the code, especially to a more restrictive license. I strongly doubt people would be retroactively bound by the new license, but stranger things have happened.

In the end, if you're serious about the legal implications of the licensing of your code, you should consult with an attorney who specializes in this area of the law, as these things can be quite complicated and not all edge and corner cases are readily apparent or easily figured out by the layman.

Bomb Bloke, public domain is probably what you're looking for from what you describe, but I think you do have to explicitly state you're putting something in to the public domain. I really don't know though! I find that the MIT license fits my needs for my Lua code here, but I have a hard time remembering to ensure that it is included with all of my various projects sometimes!

Lyqyd, on 10 March 2015 - 05:13 AM said:

Bomb Bloke, public domain is probably what you're looking for from what you describe, but I think you do have to explicitly state you're putting something in to the public domain. I really don't know though!

Sounds about right. Apparently it isn't covered under any copyright, so you'd at least need to renounce your copyright in order to release to the public domain.

It's worth noting that in some cases, where you release your code can influence matters. For example, on this forum, the generally held view is that if you post it, it's ok for anyone to do anything they like with it. However, since there's nothing in the board's terms of use about that… legally, people could possibly kick up a stink about that sort of thing.

For this reason, many sites DO put specific clauses into their usage agreements. For example, most anything you post to FaceBook (pictures, whatever) is automatically licensed such that the site owners can do with it as they wish. Under GitHub terms, making an "unlicensed" repository public gives other site users the right to fork it, and so on.

Lupus590, on 09 March 2015 - 08:27 PM said:

Also, don't happen to know the 'rules' on changing the license of code?
Edit: did a bit of googleing, if you own the copyright, you can change the license. You can't revoke the code from anyone who got it with the old license though.

added this to the op

Personally I either use MIT or Apache v2. Generally I use MIT for ComputerCraft programs, and anything else I use Apache v2. I am yet to make something closed source, so I've not looked into closed source licenses.

As you can tell by my signature, I have done it. I've migrated to MIT. Enjoy the extra freedom guys!