Top all-time · #5429
Luis Villa
Personal blog · tieguy.org/blogprogrammingaipolitics
Luis Villa writes lu.is, a personal blog at tieguy.org about programming, ai and politics. Since 2007, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “On the Importance of Per-File License Information”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Luis Villa's blog covers open source licensing, copyright, per-file license headers, Diaspora and terms of service. Commenters link its posts as sources and follow-ups without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Luis Villa: essays on open software, open culture, AI, and law
Most-linked posts?
- On the Importance of Per-File License Information2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-03-19
- Pushing back against licensing and the permission culture2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-28
- Notes on Friday's Diaspora presentation at Mozilla2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-08-21
What Hacker News says?
Lawyer perspective on non-licensing (it' dangerous): http://tieguy.org/blog/2013/01/27/taking-post-open-source-se... Non-lawyer perspective: http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/
Comment linking /blog/2013/01/27/taking-post-open-source-seriously-as-a-statement-about-copyright-law/
on “Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share”Submitted Pushing back against licensing and the permission culture as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI believe it will continue to grow but not as fast as it needs to be any serious competitor to Windows or MacOS in 2010. It still lacks a good-enought variety of (proprietary) third-party applications and games. This is what most of the younger power users care about -- and they are the ones who learn computer usage most easily. But there's no compelling reason for them to try or to switch to Linux. What blocks the…
Comment linking /blog/2009/12/23/continued-notes-on-the-macbook-experiment-week-3/
on “Linux on the desktop 2010, your honest thoughts?”Submitted First thoughts on Bilski by Mozilla lawyer Luis Villa as a story · 5 points
HN discussionFurthermore, is it not a better idea to simply include this in the readme and leave it out of the code altogether? Luis Villa discusses some reasons why you might want include licensing information in every file: http://tieguy.org/blog/2012/03/17/on-the-importance-of-per-f...
Comment linking /blog/2012/03/17/on-the-importance-of-per-file-license-information/
on “Ask HN: Is there a standard for including license, attribution within code?”Submitted On the Importance of Per-File License Information as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThey are active: http://tieguy.org/blog/2010/08/20/notes-on-diaspora-talk/
Comment linking /blog/2010/08/20/notes-on-diaspora-talk/
on “Ask HN: What happened to diaspora? ”Submitted Notes on Friday's Diaspora presentation at Mozilla as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFollow-ups: http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-villa.ht... http://tieguy.org/blog/2010/05/08/responding-to-joindiaspora...
Comment linking /blog/2010/05/08/responding-to-joindiaspora/
on “Luis Villa on Diaspora (A Distributed Social Network Project)”Submitted Google is your butler - the tension between utility and privacy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere are other solutions to fix this, http://tieguy.org/blog/2012/08/19/a-quick-note-on-conspicuou... However, if you think this is really the problem about ToS, I think you're missing the bigger picture: http://tosdr.org/blog/tosdr-in-action-i-have-read-and-agree....
Comment linking /blog/2012/08/19/a-quick-note-on-conspicuous-text-also-known-as-all-caps/
on a deleted threadSubmitted Forking and Standards: Why The Right to Fork Can Be Pro-Social as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why feed reading is an open web problem, and what browsers could do about it as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted On the Importance of Per-File License Information as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop with "contamination" about GPL. It's just "hereditary" as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Other Ways to Slice Revenue Pies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Linux desktop’s innovation problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Libre Web Application Stack (A Code Story) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Followup thoughts on the Bilski decision, by Mozilla lawyer Luis Villa as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Luis Villa on Diaspora (A Distributed Social Network Project) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Luis Villa on Patents (H.264, Theora and MPEG-LA) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Luis Villa: SaaS is free software's biggest challenge as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
