Utopia in the header file
This is from the top of sqlite3.h, the header file for the SQLite3 library – most source file would have a copyright notice here referring people to read their license, but since SQLite is public domain, the author decided to put this instead:
** The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of
** a legal notice, here is a blessing:
**
** May you do good and not evil.
** May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
** May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
I have to admit I find this inspiring. For me, it is a strong reminder that dealing with legal limitations (on software and any other form of “intellectual property”) is at best no more than a necessary evil. That goes for free software licensing as well.
Yup, my favorite software license text…
(Funnily though, it turned out that being public domain actually created some other legal issues, the creator talks about in this interview: http://twit.tv/floss26 )
Nice. I’ve always loved to read the stuff people write in the linux kernel but this was inspiring. Cheers.