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The CRAPL: an academic-strength open-source licence

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The CRAPL: an academic-strength open-source licence

Posted on 31 May 2013

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The CRAPL: an academic-strength open-source licence

Posted by s.hettrick on 31 May 2013 - 9:51am

After contemplating the problems with academic software and licensing, Matt Might, an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah, has developed the Community Research and Academic Programming License, or CRAPL.

In Matt's words, this is a licence that "suitably warns the user and aggressively absolves the author" and as such it "encourages code-sharing, regardless of how much how much Red Bull and coffee went into its production". For more information about the CRAPL licence, visit Matt's website. If you'd like a flavour of what's on offer, here's an excerpt from section II Definitions:

II. Definitions

1. "This License" refers to version 0 beta 0 of the Community
    Research and Academic Programming License (the CRAPL).

2. "The Program" refers to the medley of source code, shell scripts,
executables, objects, libraries and build files supplied to You,
or these files as modified by You.

[Any appearance of design in the Program is purely coincidental and
should not in any way be mistaken for evidence of thoughtful
software construction.]

3. "You" refers to the person or persons brave and daft enough to use
the Program.

4. "The Documentation" refers to the Program.

5. "The Author" probably refers to the caffeine-addled graduate
student that got the Program to work moments before a submission
deadline. 

Addendum: we've been asked to state that the CRAPL doesn't correspond to the
conditions of free nor open licenses as defined by the FSF or the OSI.

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