[SciPy-User] Central File Exchange for SciPy

[Robert Kern]

On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 18:07, Christopher Barker <Chris.Barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> On 11/1/10 3:58 PM, Jochen Schröder wrote:
>> Even if the snippet is licensed BSD you cannot simply copy and paste a
>> code snippet. You have to include the license and copyright notice of
>> the original author.
>
> Exactly, which is why I think "snippets" are best put in the public
> domain. yes, I know that public domain is not a license, and is even a
> bit murky legally, but for small little chunks of code:
>
> "I'm putting this out there without claiming copyright -- do with it
> what you will"
>
> really is appropriate.

Unfortunately, only the "do with it what you will" has any legal
effect in most jurisdictions. The public domain isn't all that murky.
In many jurisdictions, it's very clear that you simply cannot do it.

Using Creative Commons' CC0 license, you can get most of the way
there, but that license is much longer than the BSD license. But that
doesn't necessarily matter much for this use case given the right
interface.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco