The Nice Person Freeware License
While creating a couple of plugins and themes for WordPress I became confused, disillusioned and disenchanted with the various copyright licenses found around the net. I didn’t want anything so “legal-y” because, well frankly I’m not going to have the time, energy or patience to actually enforce it. Plus, I’m giving these things away for free!
So I decided to create my own licence as follows. Feel free to use / link to it if you feel it meets your needs, and suggestions for improvement are welcome.
The Nice Person Freeware License, version 1.0
The software referencing this license was distributed free of charge and free from any warranty of fitness for any particular purpose whatsoever. The author simply created and released the software because (s)he was a Nice Person.
Users are encouraged to use, modify, distribute, improve and otherwise manipulate the code. After all, it’s free.
The author sincerely hopes that end users enjoy and appreciate the hard work that went into creating it, and would appreciate being referenced in future modifications of the code since it was based on the author’s original concept and work.
Certain authors may make a personal request such as for donations, links, friendly comments, etc., however those requests are not tied to the use or enjoyment of the software.
Users are nonetheless encouraged to provide reciprocity whenever possible as it provides positive reinforcement and encouragement to Nice People. Furthermore, the recommended minimum reciprocation would be to leave a ‘thank you’ comment on the author’s Web site.
If there are any creative digital artists out there that could come up with a logo/button for the Nice Person license please feel free to let me know and I’ll add it to this page.
One email per post. Twenty years of this, still going. Unsubscribe whenever.
What did happen to the ‘ old ‘ freeware licence ? Didn’t the freeware licence require it to be malware free, allow you to distribute it freely and even modify it as long as you gave credit to the original author ?
I’ve been away from the net for twelve months and when I return, I find all the big freeware sites gone and keyboard hooks in a lot of the programs.
Good on you John P. for keeping the true spirit of freeware alive.
Thanks Steve.
You know, with HTMLHelp.com I’ve been doing this for a long, long time. One could argue that I’ve been at this longer than almost anyone on the net. Over the last decade I’ve had people steal my stuff, mangle my wording, and even be rude, demanding and obnoxious upon receipt of totally free content. After a while it seems to me that we have to make one of two decisions:
I really want to believe that most people are good and kind, so it seems to me that staying away from the threatening legal wording and appealing to their sense of humanity might work better.
But I don’t know, only time will tell. :-)
John
I love the line “The author simply created and released the software because (s)he was a Nice Person”.
I’ve long thought that a license-style statement of intent which placed no restriction on use, but encouraged the user to ‘play fair’ is a great idea.