html5doctor.com Reset Stylesheet license

Hello Rich,

Can you please clarify the license you intend to provide the
html5doctor.com Reset Stylesheet under, especially later revisions to
what appears in the original blog post[1], namely those on the Google
Code project[2]? In the blog post you state, "The stylesheet is
released in the public domain”, but the Google Code project states the
code is under the GNU GPL v2 — a very different status! Downloading
the stylesheet itself (v1.6.1 from 2010), it makes no mention of its
licensing status.

Furthermore, as far as I’m aware, under UK copyright law, it is
impossible to grant a work into the public domain — the only way for
something to enter into the public domain is by the copyright term
elapsing, and I hope progress on the web platform has gone far enough
as to make the stylesheet obsolete by seventy years after your death!

I’d suggest licensing it under the CC0 license, which attempts to
emulate the intent of a public domain grant[3]. Their FAQ has a
suggestion as to how to apply it to computer software[4]. You may also
want to consider simultaneously offering it under the MIT license[5],
which is the closest open-source initiative approved license to a
public domain grant. To achieve this, I’d suggest wording a grant
along the lines of the opening of the MIT license, preferably listing
the files from the download page (ideally all of them!), and stating
they may use the software under the terms of the CC0 license or the
MIT license, though as a disclaimer I am not a lawyer and should you
have any questions you’re better off speaking to a lawyer than me.
i.e., "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of html5-reset.css, html5-reset-1.2.css,
html5-reset-1.3.css, html5-reset-1.4.css, html5-reset-1.4.1.css,
html5-reset-1.5.css, html5-reset-1.5.1.css, html5-reset-1.6.css, or
html5-reset-1.6.1.css, as originally published at
<https://code.google.com/p/html5resetcss/downloads/list> (the
"Software”), to deal in the Software under the terms of the CC0 Public
Domain Dedication, see
<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>, or,
alternatively, to deal in the Software under the terms of the MIT
License, see <http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>.” (You should
probably preface this with some statement about you being the author
and copyright holder of the works.)

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response.

Thanks in advance,

Geoffrey Sneddon.

[1]: http://html5doctor.com/html-5-reset-stylesheet/
[2]; https://code.google.com/p/html5resetcss/
[3]: https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0
[4]: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F
[5]: http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Received on Tuesday, 30 June 2015 01:05:07 UTC