For all original content on this site:
© (Copyright) Chad L. Perrin
I present my statement of copyright as the creator of these works to inform you that I have the legal power to license my work as presented on this site. The specific license terms below are intended as legal assurance that you may distribute, modify, relicense, use, abuse, fold, spindle, or mutilate the relevant works at your whim without fear of "intellectual property" legal threat.
Now, we get to the real purpose of this licensing page.
For all original content on this site:
Ⓕ (Copyfree) Chad L. Perrin
You may accept content under the terms of the DPL or the COIL (license texts below) at your discretion. Both licenses should be applicable to multiple media types -- text, music (if you for some reason want to make music out of my writing), source code, photos/screenshots, and so on. Specific details of the comparative utility of each are included after the quoted license texts.
In some respects, both are very similar to other copyfree licenses but, unlike some of the most popular of those, neither of these is limited in its specific language to software purposes. Both are also less restrictive in their licensing terms, and more compatible with other licenses, than any Creative Commons license other than CC0.
If you prefer other license terms, please contact me to discuss it. As long as your desire is not for more restrictive licenses, I'm likely to agree to allow distribution under other terms. My reason for not including public domain, however, is the lack of legal assurance that people can actually even use the covered works in many jurisdictions. I want my work to be open to as many people as possible, rather than just unrestricted to some nebulous guesses of who can even legally benefit from a public domain grant.
That aside, I don't really care if you use my work here in a public domain modified, derived, or combined work. Have at it, with my blessing. If you are willing to just hope that nobody will get sued for works released under a public domain grant, you should be willing to accept this statement as permission for you to accept these works as though they, too, are public domain.
DPL:
Permission is hereby granted by the holder(s) of copyright or other legal privileges, author(s) or assembler(s), and contributor(s) of this work, to any person who obtains a copy of this work in any form, to reproduce, modify, distribute, publish, sell, sublicense, use, and/or otherwise deal in the licensed material without restriction, provided the following conditions are met.
Redistributions, modified or unmodified, in whole or in part, must make applicable copyright and other legal privilege notices, the above license notice, these conditions, and the following disclaimer, freely available to recipients on distribution through one of the following means, in descending order of preferability: incorporated into the work, provided with the work, presented via the medium or method of distribution for the work, or upon request by recipients of the work while the work is offered for distribution.
NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS IMPLIED BY, OR SHOULD BE INFERRED FROM, THIS LICENSE OR THE ACT OF DISTRIBUTION UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS, ASSEMBLERS, OR HOLDERS OF COPYRIGHT OR OTHER LEGAL PRIVILEGE BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE WORK OR THE USE OF OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE WORK.
This license seems to be one of the more widely applicable licenses out there. It allows distribution of the work without the license text itself included. It only requires that license terms and legal notices must be made available in one of a variety of ways. Common license text inclusion requirements can be incredibly awkward for some cases such as performance or distribution of music, video, and image files; this license aims to avoid such issues.
COIL v1.0:
Redistributions, modified or unmodified, in whole or in part, must retain applicable notices of copyright or other legal privilege, these conditions, and the following license terms and disclaimer. Subject to these conditions, each holder of copyright or other legal privileges, author or assembler, and contributor of this work, henceforth "licensor", hereby grants to any person who obtains a copy of this work in any form:
Permission to reproduce, modify, distribute, publish, sell, sublicense, use, and/or otherwise deal in the licensed material without restriction.
A perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, gratis, irrevocable patent license to make, have made, provide, transfer, import, use, and/or otherwise deal in the licensed material without restriction, for any and all patents held by such licensor and necessarily infringed by the form of the work upon distribution of that licensor's contribution to the work under the terms of this license.
NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS IMPLIED BY, OR SHOULD BE INFERRED FROM, THIS LICENSE OR THE ACT OF DISTRIBUTION UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS, ASSEMBLERS, OR HOLDERS OF COPYRIGHT OR OTHER LEGAL PRIVILEGE BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE WORK OR THE USE OF OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE WORK.
This license is roughly equivalent to the MIT/X11 License (aka Expat License, aka MIT License) or Simplified BSD License (aka 2-Clause BSD License), but with the addition of a patent clause. It provides the patent clause that is the justification for many projects using the Apache License v2 (AL2), but also avoids the troublesome bookkeeping and project organization clauses of the AL2.