[Haskell-cafe] short licensing question

[Jeremy Shaw]

> What reasons do people have to use a BSD license over a Public  
> Domain license, for example with the license text from: <http://www.lemur.com/pd-disclaimers.html 
> > ? Is the only difference that, with a BSD license, the copyright  
> notice must be maintained?

I've heard rumors that you can't license your code as public domain in  
some countries. Not sure if the BSD3 helps with that though.

But, one reason I license my Haskell code as BSD3 is that GHC and  
most(?) of the libraries on hackage are BSD3. And the BSD3 license is  
very widely known. As a result, I don't expect to have to deal with  
licensing issues. If I used a different license, then people would  
have to wonder... even if the license was more liberal. I figure  
people want to code, not think about licenses :p

Also, I think it is kind of rude/conceited  to license my code as GPL  
when it builds on so much BSD3 code. As if my code is some how so much  
better that the BSD3 isn't good enough for it :p

- jeremy