Buy Gus a Beer! Or About the Beer-ware License
Text and Origins
If you are using FMDB in your project, I'd love to hear about it. Let Gus know
by sending an email to gus@flyingmeat.com.
And if you happen to come across either Gus Mueller or Rob Ryan in a bar, you
might consider purchasing a drink of their choosing if FMDB has been useful to
you.
Finally, and shortly, this is the MIT License.
It is remarkable that the authors of the code approached the issue of the license with a bit of humor and, in addition to its standard text, left such a postscript. And it is doubly remarkable that such a postscript quite suggests another type of license – Beer-ware. Have you ever heard of such a thing? If not, then let's get to know it. So, meet:
Beer-ware licenses are classified as Donationware licenses. If suddenly you are unfamiliar with such a category, then a couple of phrases from Wikipedia will be enough for our educational program, according to which, donationware is understood as a licensing model in which fully functioning software is provided with the opportunity to make a donation to the developer, the amount of which can be fixed or set by a user independently at his discretion based on his own assessment software values.
Beer-ware, therefore, should be understood as a type of license with fairly permissive terms, according to which a user has the right to use the licensed object freely, but at the same time, if they so wish, can undertake the obligation to thank the copyright holder with beer (hence the name of the license) as a sign of how useful the use of such a licensed object was to them.
According to various sources, originally the term Beer-ware in relation to the license came to the mind of a man named John Bristor on April 25, 1987 in Pensacola, Florida, and the first software distributed under such a license model within various BBSs dates back to 1987-1988. Since then, many variants and variations of this type of license have appeared, but the most famous of them is the following:
/*
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
* <phk@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
* can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
* this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/
The above text is the content of the Beer-ware License (version 42), authored by Paul-Henning Kamp, a venerable UNIX developer originally from Denmark, who, in his own words, decided to give users of their code real freedom regarding its use, not burdened with unnecessary legal formulations of the license. He admits that the GNU family of licenses is just a joke and contains too many vague statements, so he decided to opt for a simpler license, in the spirit of the BSD-lite license. That's how Beer-ware was born.
There is information that this license appeared already in 1998, however according to other sources, it was published only in 2004. But what's most remarkable is that its version number is 42. Those who are in the know clearly understand that there were no previous versions 41, 40, 39, etc. One comrade, for greater authenticity, even talked with Camp about the license version, and he confirmed that 42 really means the following:
The BeerWare license was supposed to be the answer to the BSD vs GPL dispute, so it ovbiously had to be revision 42 ;-)
Legal Status, Similar Licenses
In general, the Beer-ware license is similar to licenses such as WTFPL, MIT in its wide freedom of action for the user. As part of the Fedora project this license is characterized as an extremely liberal one, which allows the use of software code licensed under its terms almost as code in the public domain status. The license contains an optional (i.e. not mandatory) clause, according to which, if the user considers that he should do so, he has the right to purchase beer for the copyright holder. If this condition were mandatory, it would not make the license free. But since this is not the case, the license should be considered free and GPL-compatible. In principle, it can also be considered compatible with proprietary licenses, since it does not require mandatory code disclosure.
The Free Software Foundation has not yet provided any clear guidance on this license, but its comments on so-called informal licenses, which are defined as free, non-copyleft, and GPL-compatible, are described by the Foundation as being applicable to the Beer-ware license as well. At the same time, the Foundation recommends applying more detailed licenses instead of such informal ones.
The Beer-ware license has found practical application in such projects as, for example, mcchunktools, radio, FSL.
It is also worth saying a few words regarding the variations in the text of the license itself. Thus, the resource tldrlegal.com (a project dedicated to software licenses) indicates that some variations of this license are not about buying beer for the author, but about drinking this drink in honor of the author. There is also an option, according to which the author would be happy to receive non-alcoholic beer.
In addition to these variations, there are even derivative licenses that are related to food (for example, like Pizzaware (where instead of beer we are talking about pizza), Sushi-ware, Vegetarian-food-ware) and drinks (for example, Coffeeware, Sake-ware and even Pearl-tea-ware (apparently, there are fans of this too), and just any beverage-ware).
I would also like to single out the author of the tequila-ware license, since he came up with not only about tequila, but also several interesting prohibitions (in particular, about the use of software in relation to communism and socialism).
"THE TEQUILA-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 44): <charlie@wolf.is> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this software subject to the following restrictions:
1) If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me some tequila in return.
2) You may not use this software directly or indirectly for any military or paramilitary purpose. This includes, but is not limited to, training, research and development, controlling military hardware, directing military personnel, or troop entertainment. You may not use this software anywhere on a military base or vessel. You may also not use it for developing "games" produced by the military to recruit players as real soldiers. Special exemptions may be granted on a case-by-case basis to organizations thwarting the spread of communism.
3) You may not use this software or its derivatives to develop any projects created chiefly for the use or benefit of any government, government agency, or government sponsored enterprise
4) You may not use this software or its derivatives in connection with communism, socialism, or any organization practicing or advocating for communism or socialism
5) You may not use this software or its derivatives in connection with mass data collection, whether state-sponsored or private, where "mass data collection" refers to any software or service whose business model is based directly or indirectly on collecting and using data from nonpaying users in exchange for provision of a service to those users not directly related to said data. Projects using this software as a component in a larger project that also interfaces with an organization engaged in this business are exempt (i.e. you can use this in an application that also uses Facebook Connect as long as you are not Facebook.)
It seems that the author has decided to achieve the glory of being the author of the JSON license with its well-known and strange for a legal document formulation:
The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil
Anyway. No less remarkable is the version of the Hug-ware license, where instead of food and drink the software author expects hugs from you:
/******************************************************************************
* "THE HUG-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 2): As long as you retain this notice you *
* can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you *
* think this stuff is worth it, you can give me/us a hug. *
******************************************************************************/
Conclusion
Of course, one could argue at length about how good a license like Beer-ware really is as a legal document expressing the will of the author of the software code in the form of its conditions. But it is already possible to note with confidence that such a number of derivative license variants allows us to say that the idea with this license has entered the people community of open source users successfully, and the license itself has received its share of attention and fame.
So if anyone wants to be rewarded with a quality alcoholic drink from their grateful users for their software product, now you know which license would be most suitable for such a case.
Or you can do like Gus, just choose the license you want and add a note that you wouldn't mind being treated to something nice when you meet.
The illustration is taken from here authored by Kita59, CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.