License

Definition and stakes

Nathan Clifford State Tonnage Tax Cases Cox v. Collector Trade Company…

Evidently the word license, as used in that act, as the court say in that case, means permission or authority, and it is equally clear that a license to do any particular thing is a permission or authority to do that thing, and if granted by a person having power to grant it, that it transfers to the grantee the right to do whatever it purports to authorize.
Source: Wikisource

Eben Moglen, Lawrence Lessig Document Licenses and the Future of Free Culture (2006)

I think the more efficient way to do it is to embrace – again I credit, you know, Jimbo completely for getting me to see this point – rather than imagining that any of us is great, at sitting down and writing the perfect license, not at imagining that any of us, you know, whether it’s Eben and Richard or Richard alone or me and my lawyers or whatever, any of us is bright enough to figure out what the best license is, embrace a strategy that allows you to learn what the best license is.
Source: Wikisource

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