The "Use With Love" Public License

My inclination on most new software I create is to jump right to adding The MIT License. But with my website, I felt differently.

While consolidating content into this personal blog, I came across the CSS-Tricks license and I loved it! In particular, I loved the attitude of take it, use it for good, share it. It helped me realize that getting all bent out of shape about some jackass who is going to wholesale copy articles is probably not worth it.

My Original License

My site is nowhere near the level of traffic of CSS-Tricks. But I still wanted to (re)start on a similar footing. So I put this license content together and presented it as a page on the site.

A few months later, I received an email from some organization that suggest I license my code by dropping a LICENSE file in the repository, which I then realized I totally forgot to do.

Looking for a New License

When looking around for licenses, I started with MIT once again. But it just felt too open. I'm perfectly fine with anyone taking code examples or the site layout, but I don't really want to copyright infringement on my copy or my brand. Those are the things that make this site what it is. And what it is (as I write this) is a series of articles written to help the community. I don't make any money from this work (at this time).

So I looked for some other creative approaches. I found The Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License and the modified Don't Be a Dick Public License. I love them. They are funny, and get to the point. But I didn't really want to be super snarky with the legal text. I can save that for the modified page.

The "Use With Love" License

So I took all four of those texts (MIT, CSS, WTFPL, DBAD) and combined them into something that works for me.

Here's what it looks like at the time of writing:

USE WITH LOVE PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 1, June 2021

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software to use, copy, modify, and distribute under the following
conditions:

1. Outright copyright infringement is not permitted. Only reasonably modified
versions of the original work may be distributed.

2. Share the love. This software was provided to you, free of charge, to help
you. If you benefit from it, support the original work in some way.

3. Creative assets used within this software may not be used or copied without
written consent from the copyright holder.

4. Works derived from modification of this code must be distributed under an
equally open license.

5. The software is provided without warranty of any kind. The copyright holders
are not subject to any claim arising from use of this code.

And here's the current version of it.

It's All Yours

If you like it and want to use it, it's all yours. Do what the license says! Take it, use or modify it, and share the love.

Keep making the web a little better. ❤️