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Permission to reuse the Wicked Cool scripts

I have received a number of queries from people in the Unix/Linux community asking for the details of ownership and copyright for the scripts included in my best-selling Wicked Cool Shell Scripts. When I first started programming and distributing my works online (in the early 1980's) no-one really worried about any of that and if the original author's name stayed intact, we'd think that was a wonderful thing.

Dave's Answer: Times have changed, however, and now open source software is big business. Further, there are more people who are willing to repurpose and rebrand large bodies of code for purposes of self-aggrandizement and profit, so the world of IP has changed somewhat. As a result, I've had to look at different options and think through the copyright a bit more than I expected.

The good news is that I've decided upon the following terms, as highlighted in these lines that should appear exactly as shown on all scripts taken from the book, the book's script library or derived from these scripts:


    # This script is (c) 2004 by Dave Taylor and may be freely 
    # disseminated and modified for educational purposes. 
    # Commercial users must contact the author for specific 
    # permission: taylor at intuitive . com
    # This script is from the book Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
    # (NoStarch, 2004) http://www.intuitive.com/wicked/

That's it. Not too constraining, I hope.

If you have thoughts on this or suggestions for modifications, please don't hesitate to add a comment to this note so we can discuss it.

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Categorized: Shell Script Programming (Article 3726)
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