No copyright

I don’t have any copyright declaration on this website.

The problem with that is: content is copyrighted by default. As Jeff Atwood indicates, this means that people with experience in such matters won’t copy the content because they have no legal right to use it.

Let me clarify: I don’t care what you do with my content. Feel free. You don’t have to ask. You don’t have to attribute it to me. You can change it. You can misquote me. Whatever.

I tried to find a Creative Commons license that suits my purposes. Of their licenses, the most liberal is the Creative Commons Attribution license.

This says you can do what you want as long as you attribute my content to me.

But that creates a constraint. And if I had a choice, I’d rather have my content quoted than be attributed.

The license that best captures this is the WTFPL, or Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License.

           DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
                   Version 2, December 2004

Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar
 14 rue de Plaisance, 75014 Paris, France
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
as the name is changed.

           DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
  TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

 0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

So, in the spirit of a happy and open Internet, the contents and code in this site is released under the WTFPL. Do what you want with it.

Comments

Prasenjeet 4 Mar 2009 12:37 pm: +1 for Yahoo Pipes. Or write/cajole someone into writing a Python script. With a library like BeautifulSoup, screen-scraping HTML has never been easier.

Rishi 4 Mar 2009 4:13 am: Though a way to do it via the PC would be to run a VB macro that imports the content and then publishes it.

S Anand 4 Mar 2009 7:19 am: Use Yahoo Query Language (http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/) or Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/). You’ll be able to create an RSS feed out of any content.

Rishi 4 Mar 2009 4:07 am: Hey Anand, I know you have written “dont mail me, call me”, but rather than waste your time and an ISD call on a triviality, let me take the chance of putting it as a comment. Problem: Webiste (www.orbat.com) does not have an RSS feed, and the editor is not really tech savvy enough to screw around with the code to put one. How can an external/unrelated party copy/paste the blog entries whenever it is updated (say to a blogspot account). This, independent of any code running on a PC - rather is there a way to make a hack that will do this - online? (i.e. some piece of code that will trigger a compare string (string = first 10 words of old blog post say) , and copy/ paste on blogspot till old string found, and then re-initialize the string to the new post. Something that does this check maybe once a day? Rishi IITB, IIMK

S Anand 5 Mar 2009 7:46 pm: It isn’t, of course. Why, did someone mention elite institutes when talking about copyright? ;-) Nah, I just have it on my front page so people can find me on Google.

somnath 5 Mar 2009 11:15 pm: This is for Mihir about the elite institutes My guess you don’t know Anand enough … he happens to walk through the doors of those elite institutes at some point of time in life when we have struggled a lot :)

Mihir Modi 5 Mar 2009 7:20 pm: Slightly off-topic, but why is it relevant for someone to specify which elite institutes they belong to when they’re talking about copyright :P (Plain curiousity. No offense meant!)

Mihir Modi 6 Mar 2009 2:30 pm: Oh no no… Anand, this is your site, you can talk about yourself as much as you want! :D I was referring to the comment by Rishi right up there! (Gosh! NOW I’m getting personal!)

Prasenjeet 4 Mar 2009 12:37 pm: +1 for Yahoo Pipes. Or write/cajole someone into writing a Python script. With a library like BeautifulSoup, screen-scraping HTML has never been easier.
Rishi 4 Mar 2009 4:13 am: Though a way to do it via the PC would be to run a VB macro that imports the content and then publishes it.
S Anand 4 Mar 2009 7:19 am: Use Yahoo Query Language (http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/) or Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/). You’ll be able to create an RSS feed out of any content.
Rishi 4 Mar 2009 4:07 am: Hey Anand, I know you have written “dont mail me, call me”, but rather than waste your time and an ISD call on a triviality, let me take the chance of putting it as a comment. Problem: Webiste (www.orbat.com) does not have an RSS feed, and the editor is not really tech savvy enough to screw around with the code to put one. How can an external/unrelated party copy/paste the blog entries whenever it is updated (say to a blogspot account). This, independent of any code running on a PC - rather is there a way to make a hack that will do this - online? (i.e. some piece of code that will trigger a compare string (string = first 10 words of old blog post say) , and copy/ paste on blogspot till old string found, and then re-initialize the string to the new post. Something that does this check maybe once a day? Rishi IITB, IIMK
S Anand 5 Mar 2009 7:46 pm: It isn’t, of course. Why, did someone mention elite institutes when talking about copyright? ;-) Nah, I just have it on my front page so people can find me on Google.
somnath 5 Mar 2009 11:15 pm: This is for Mihir about the elite institutes My guess you don’t know Anand enough … he happens to walk through the doors of those elite institutes at some point of time in life when we have struggled a lot :)
Mihir Modi 5 Mar 2009 7:20 pm: Slightly off-topic, but why is it relevant for someone to specify which elite institutes they belong to when they’re talking about copyright :P (Plain curiousity. No offense meant!)
Mihir Modi 6 Mar 2009 2:30 pm: Oh no no… Anand, this is your site, you can talk about yourself as much as you want! :D I was referring to the comment by Rishi right up there! (Gosh! NOW I’m getting personal!)