Top all-time · #6262
Arto Bendiken
Personal blog · ar.toprogramminghistoryeconomics
Arto Bendiken's personal blog at ar.to covers programming, history and economics. Since 2009, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “Dissecting the Unlicense: Software Freedom in Four Clauses and a Link (2010)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-20, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Arto Bendiken's posts on software licensing and public domain, including the Unlicense and license-free software, plus a post on the Russo-Finnish Winter War and Common Lisp scripting notes.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Arto Bendiken
Most-linked posts?
- Dissecting the Unlicense: Software Freedom in Four Clauses and a Link (2010)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-08-29
- Unlicense - One Year of Public Domain Code3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-01-02
- A Thousand Lakes of Red Blood on White Snow3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-08-13
- /2010/12/licensing-and-unlicensing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-20
What Hacker News says?
Indeed. http://ar.to/2010/08/red-blood-white-snow
Comment linking /2010/08/red-blood-white-snow
on “Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles”Submitted Unlicense - One Year of Public Domain Code as a story · 31 points
HN discussionCould you be more precise? Are you repeating the "it's impossible to voluntarily place a work in the public domain" canard? There are well-established precedents in the US and Europe for authors waiving copyright. See djb's FAQ: http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html . If you are really paranoid and want a wordy license written in legalese to the same effect, you could use CC0. There's a detailed FAQ here: http://wiki.cr…
Comment linking /2010/01/dissecting-the-unlicense
on “Why no Steam, Notch?”Submitted Set your code free as a story · 26 points
HN discussionI love this account of the Russo-Finnish Winter War - https://ar.to/2010/08/red-blood-white-snow
Comment linking /2010/08/red-blood-white-snow
on “Tricks of Trench Warfare (2020)”Submitted Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire as a story · 10 points
HN discussionFellow Lispers may perhaps also find helpful these notes I put together recently on shebang lines for various open-source Common Lisp implementations: http://ar.to/notes/common-lisp#scripting-with-common-lisp
Comment linking /notes/common-lisp
on “Common Lisp as a Scripting Language, 2015 Edition”Submitted A Thousand Lakes of Red Blood on White Snow as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCC0[0] would be the obvious one; spicier and less legalese alternatives that nonetheless amount to about the same thing include the Unlicense[1] and the Do What the Fuck You Want Public License[2] [0] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc... [1] https://unlicense.org/ with some philosophical discussion at https://ar.to/2010/01/set-your-code-free [2] http://www.wtfpl.net/
Comment linking /2010/01/set-your-code-free
on “We need more of Richard Stallman, not less”Submitted Dissecting the Unlicense: Software Freedom in Four Clauses and a Link (2010) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionProperly, projects lacking licensing information are known as "license-free software": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License-free_software http://ar.to/2010/12/licensing-and-unlicensing
Comment linking /2010/12/licensing-and-unlicensing
on “Why your next project should be public domain”Submitted The Finnish Winter War - A Thousand Lakes of Red Blood on White Snow [2010] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe term you actually want is "license-free software": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License-free_software There's some more to be found regarding the terminology here: http://ar.to/2010/12/licensing-and-unlicensing
Comment linking /2010/12/licensing-and-unlicensing
on “Finding Unlicensed Repos on Github”Submitted The Unlicense: The First Year in Review as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThat is why the Unlicense is designed to be treated as a license as a fall-back strategy (inspired by the Creative Commons Zero public-domain dedication). More particulars at: http://ar.to/2010/01/dissecting-the-unlicense
Comment linking /2010/01/dissecting-the-unlicense
on “Why I Unlicense”http://ar.to/2011/01/unlicense-1st-year explains some of the motivations e.g. Creative Commons licenses generally are discouraged for software. Not much of an issue in case of CC0, but still
Comment linking /2011/01/unlicense-1st-year
on “Unlicense.org is not unlicensed”
