[pmwiki-users] Cookbook Recipes & Licensing

Petko Yotov 5ko at 5ko.fr
Fri Jun 27 03:09:17 CDT 2014


Criss Ittermann writes:
> Could it just be as easy as adding “License: GPL 2” (as a default, being the  
> same as PmWiki’s license) to the Cookbook header template so that new authors  
> are encouraged to add their license information on each Cookbook page?

In the past Pm has stated that he prefers people to opt-in if they want, and  
not to force them to opt-out if they don't want, or leave them opted-in if  
they don't understand something. A license people select for their works is  
legally binding. So I wouldn't add any license tags in the "default" recipe  
template.

But feel free to add any information you think is needed on the pages that  
document how to create recipes/modules - for example that selecting an open  
source license may allow others to make money of the script you wrote  
without any need to ask you ot to pay you anything, as long as they respect  
the license terms.


> If I open a PHP file for a recipe and find a license in it, I’m more than  
> happy to add the license type info into the cookbook document.  Anyone else  
> could do that, too — and authors can update their own recipes &/or the  
> <URL:http://pmwiki.org>pmwiki.org Cookbook recipe page themselves.  i.e.  
> crowdsource it.

Even if there is some license information on the wiki page, I'd advise to  
always look into the source code for a license block. A wiki page can be  
modified by anyone at any time.


> I’m a little more concerned about the recipes where there’s absolutely no  
> license information to be found.  That goes for mine as well, if I forgot to  
> add it to the recipes.  My intent was GPL, but technically people aren’t  
> allowed to alter it unless I say that.

People are probably also not allowed to distribute it to other people, or to  
use it in a commercial way, eg. pay somebody to install/configure/fix it for  
them -- while the author is alive and for 70 years after January 1st after  
his/her death (in most places).

If the recipes reuse code snippets (even modified) from other recipes or  
from PmWiki core functions, the new recipe is eg. GPLv2+ like the original  
recipe/script. Publishing such a script without properly attributing /  
identifying the license and the original author(s) is copyright infringement  
and counterfeit, but it is easy to fix - by adding the license/author  
information.

Petko




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