Notice of License

Copyright Holder:

If you hold the copyright for something and wish to license it under the terms of the PDL, you may in essence do so just about any way you like. See a lawyer for more specifics, but acceptable means of offering under the PDL (or most/any other licenses) include:

  1. For online display of licensed content, post notice of acceptable license terms, such as with the text (including link) "This content Copyright 2008, and may be redistributed under the terms of the PDL."
  2. Offer compressed archive for download, with license text included.
  3. Offer content download with included URL for the online PDL page and text similar to that in option 1 of this list.
  4. Provide physical printed media with the text of the license included.
  5. Provide physical printed media with included URL of the online PDL page and text similar to that in option 1 of this list.
  6. Provide physical storage media such as a CD with the text of the license included.
  7. Provide physical storage media such as a CD with included URL of the online PDL page and text similar to that in option 1 of this list.
  8. Et cetera.

Redistributor:

It is probably a bad idea to redistribute content covered by the terms of any license without distributing the full text of the license with the content, if you are not the copyright holder of that content, for legal reasons.

Recipient:

If you believe you have received content subject to the terms of the PDL without being advised of the applicability of the PDL's terms, please contact the redistributor to resolve the issue. If the redistributor fails to abide by the terms of the PDL, please contact the copyright holder if possible and inform him or her of this oversight. Such license enforcement issues are not the responsibility of the maintainer of the PDL itself.

Dual-Licensing:

Because of its weak heritability and license restriction characteristics, there should be no legal need to dual-license a work covered by the PDL to encourage adoption, use, or redistribution. It may serve as an ideal companion to licenses with strong heritability such as the CCD CopyWrite License, however -- particularly in cases where the software-specific BSD and MIT licenses are not appropriate. There may be social reasons to dual-license a work covered by the PDL, however, to associate a given work with an established license with significant mindshare. The BSD and MIT licenses are ideal for these purposes with regard to software, and the Creative Commons BY/SA license serves similarly well for other content types.