Highly Reusable Software

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LIDESC stamps for disjoint licenses

Some software is distributed under disjunctive licensing. (The copyright holder offers two or more mutually exclusive licenses, and allows you to choose.)

Stamps for acquired software

Copyright law generally reserves redistribution and making changes to the copyright holder alone. Often the software license will allow these actions with limitations and conditions. Therefore, as soon as you do something you need the license to do legally, you have to make a selection of license.

It is not prudent to determine that at least one license allows what you are doing, and delay the selection of the license you are going to follow. The license is an offer of contract, and the legal permission to do certain things is conditioned on your acceptance of the contract. You must choose before you enjoy the benefits of the contract.

In order to do reporting and compatibility checking, LIDESC needs to know which one you chose. LIDESC easily accomodates indicating your selection in a number of ways. You can record the stamp in a separate .lic file or embed it, as described at Creating license stamps for files.

Remember that LIDESC stamps are a license awareness tool. The stamps you create for specific files should provide an accurate indication of the licenses which cover your use of copyrighted works. Inaccurate stamps are not going to change the rights and limitations provided by the license; they will simply lead to inaccurate output of LIDESC. But you should be careful that a license stamp that you created might be taken as evidence of having made a particular selection.

Stamps for distribution

LIDESC stamps are also intended to appear in files when redistributed. When you are redistributing copies, or intend to redistribute copies, the recipient's rights and limitations may be different than yours (which is the case when you are the copyright holder, for example.)

When you redistribute, the LIDESC stamps should be accurate for the recipient. You should ensure that any license stamps which appear are accurate. Depending on how you are distributing the copies, the comments at the top of the file and the license stamp might be considered a valid offer of contract.

Here are some guidelines for deciding which method of stamps to use, so that the LIDESC stamps can accurately indicate the license which applies to you AND those who receive a copy from you. (For specific assistance and suggestions contact us as noted at LIDESC Downloads and Services)

Unchanged copies: use a stamp in a separate file

Many Free and Open Source licenses are an offer of contract to anyone receiving a copy of the software. Anyone receiving an unchanged copy from you gets the same offer that you did.

If the offer of contract is a disjoint license, you preserve the meaning of this offer by recording the stamp in a separate .lic file, and not embedding it. It represents only your selection of contract.

When you redistribute such files, omit the corresponding .lic file unless the licensing selection by the recipient is affected by your choice. (This will depend on how the offer of contract is worded, and what you have done.)

Modified copies

Under copyright law, making changes to a work is reserved to the copyright holder. You must accept a particular license which permits making changes to legally do so.

If only one of the offerred licenses allows making changes, you should embed a LIDESC stamp at the time you make changes. (At the time you do this, you must also remove the separate .lic file, because the .lic file will override any embedded stamps.)

If more than one of the offered licenses allows making changes, it may be within your power as copyright holder of the changes to redistribute the work with the same offer of disjoint licensing as the original, giving recipients the same range of selection. If this is true, you should make sure the comments reflect the situation, and probably not distribute LIDESC stamps. The stamps indicating your selection should appear in a separate .lic file, and would not be embedded.

Up to: Creating license stamps for files
Up to: LIDESC User Documentation

Librock LIDESC. Software License Analyzer and Compatibility Reporter
Copyright 2001-2002, Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software
You may reproduce verbatim copies of this page, but changing it is not allowed.
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