Ask HN: Why are there open-source software licenses?

1 points by rer 9 years ago | 5 comments

Would we be worse off if there weren't any?

ankurdhama 9 years ago |

So that the closed source people can't copy open source and sell them as their products and if they do then open source people have the "legal tool" aka the license to tackle them legally.

cocktailpeanuts 9 years ago |

then it would simply mean it is not open. When someone creates something, by default it's "closed" and it's their property. If you take that code and use it when there's no permission, that's stealing. If you want to "open" up your code so anyone can use it, you should explicitly tell people they can take it for free. Meet license.

rer 9 years ago | |

Sentences are creations. Does this mean every sentence we write on HN or say to each other by default is closed and needs a license?

gus_massa 9 years ago | | |

Actually yes, but so most sites has some legalese in the TOS and there is also fair use.

IANAL. TINLA. You can probably quote a comment from one HN user, but if you copy all the comments from one "famous" user of HN and write a book with them, then you'll probably get some copyright problems.

volaski 9 years ago | | |

Nope, your sentences are not as valuable as you think. Neither is mine. But a great book containing thousands of sentences is valuable enough to to be purchased.