Public Domain vs. License Agreement Aleksandar Vukelja, aleksandar@masstheory.org I'm a computer programmer, and during past several years, I have "accepted" plethora of meaningless licence agreements, copyright statements, various abbreviations - EULAs, GPLs, LGPLs, SPLs and other legal garbage which, in the context of my own use of the software were purely idiotic. Here's an example -- it seems that some people high enough in Linux community had the influence and specific bad taste and liking for some of popular abbreviations, so you get not only the notice, but the full text of a licence agreeement in majority of, if not all, "about" dialog boxes. The problem is that this behavior is put up by people who absolutely have no power, money, time, desire or reason to get involved in a court process in order to force someone who breaks the "Licence Agreement" to start to appreciate it. Yet any copyright notice, legal statement, license agreement - you name it, is all about a court threat that means: do as it says here (or act within limits set by a law) or I'll see you in court! So I have to ask a question: If this kind of behavior is meaningless, why continue practicing it? I am inviting readers to do as I do: If you have something that you basically want to give for free, then do not be afraid of people. Make it as free as the air that you breath. Without some hidden charge, without explicit or hidden threat. Do it generously. Be happy if you succeed in helping the common thing of us all.