Creative Commons License

flurdy's license of respect

Version: 0.4β
Also known as 'Respect', 'Respect License', 'License of Respect'.
| Introduction | Compliance | License | Attribution | Share | Donation | Notes |

Introduction

The license of respect tries to facilitate optional ethical suggestions on top of the underlaying real license.

The real license is the what you have to obey by law. You have to follow all their guidelines and rules.

The respect part is what you should ethically do, but it optional. There are suggestions in terms of advertising and attribution, in regards of donating money or other resources, and tips on how to share the licensed work and your work.

Compliance

The license of respect works the other way as well. Sometimes it is very hard or nigh on impossible to comply with all the terms of some licenses, even with the best intentions. This license can make this easier for you.

The underlaying license's terms are legal requirements. However this license will try explain how the copyright holder expects people to comply with these requirements.

But the best thing is always to ask the copyright holder for clarification or excemptions.

License

If a piece of work is licensed with respect, it should specify with license respect is wrapped around.

Default

If no other license is specified, and the work is not software, the default and assumed real license is:

Software

If the work is software, and no other license is specified the default and assumed license is:

Specified

If the real license is specified it is generally either the default ones mentioned above, or one of these:

Other

You can use respect with other open source licenses, however it is up to you to make sure it is compatible.

Attribution

You should attribute the people behind the work licensed.

People have big egoes, and like to be heralded.
Or they like people to recognise to work they have put into something.
Or they depend on the advertisement for future work.
Or their work use other peoples work whos license demand or would like attribution.
And to stop people claiming others work as their own.

The underlying license has legal requirements on how to attribute the work. By using a respect license, the copyright holder has a varied expectancy on attribution. How important and central this work is to your work affects how much attribution is expected.

Attribution examples

Share

Different underlying licenses have different requirements, however most require this work to be freely distributed under the license agreement. Most also require any work based on this work to be distributed under a similar agreement. Some allow you to create work which uses this work without shareing your work.

However this is an open source license, so it is ethically suggested to share all work.

Again how you share this work and derivatives depends on how important it is to you.

Distribution examples

Donation

Monatory reimbursement is not a requirement of any of the standard underlying licenses. They try to be free as in speech as well as beer.

Donations are however appreciated, and will provide resources to enhance the licensed product further.

If you generate a large revenue from using the licensed work, then it is only fair to show appreciation of their work by donating. Again how important this work is to your organisation affects how much you should donate. Also some prefer regular subscription models to one off donations.

The size of you organisation affects the expected donations. Large multinational with huge revenues are expected to donate more. Small organisation or just one indivual, are not expected to donate anything, especially if they do not generate much money by using it.

But if you attribute and advertise the licensed work quite a lot, if you participate in the development with bug reports, feature request or actual development, if you share and distribute the work well, then this counter balances the need for any donations.

The formula used to estimate a reasonable donation is not exact, but a combination of ( Size * Revene * Importance ) / (Attribution * Distribution * Participation ). So the size and revenue sets how much to donate, which is multiplied by importance for relevance. How much you follow these guidelines and beyond is then offset against that.

Donation examples
Variables Donation Subscription
Company size Revenue Importance Attribution Distribution Participation
Large, 10,000+ Large, $100 Mill+ Core Some Some Little $100,000 $5000
Large, 10,000 Large, $500 Mill+ Little Some Some Little $1,000 $0
Medium, 100+ Medium, $10 Mill+ Core Some Some Little $5,000 $1,000
Medium, 100+ Medium, $10 Mill+ Little Some Some Little $500 $0
Small, 1+ Some, $1 Mill+ Core Some Some Little $500 $100
Small, 1+ Some, $1 Mill+ Little Some Some Little $0 $50
Large, 10,000+ Large, $100 Mill+ Medium Alot Alot Alot $1000 $1000
Medium, 100+ Medium, $10 Mill+ Medium Alot Alot Alot $500 $250
Small, 1+ Some, $1 Mill+ Medium Alot Alot Alot $0 $0
Small, 1+ Little, <$50,000 Medium Some Some Some $0 $0

Notes

Disclaimer: This was not written by a lawyer, but the Creative Commons or the Free Software Foundation can assist in legal matters.

Unless fully released the author reserves the right to make minor changes to this license version.
Fully released versions require new version number if any changes are made.

The online version of this is at flurdy.com/docs/license/respect/.

This license document itself is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.