You may not realize this from scanning my site, but I was this close (envision thumb and pointer finger nearly touching) to pursuing a career in intellectual property law.   I even went so far as to take the LSAT ^[1], enroll in a pre-law seminar, and participate in a semester-long legal internship.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but I obviously decided against that career path.  Today I am employed as a scientist by day and writer by night (with the occasional dabble in music composition and/or programming).

I’m glad I made the choice I did.

Many things deterred me from pursuing IP law, not least of which is the fact that current IP laws are a bane upon consumers ^[2].  From DRM to software patents to P2P throttling, the digital world is consistently held back by ignorant, consumer-unfriendly corporation-sponsored lawmaking.  Nowhere is this more apparent than with the joke called DRM ^[3] – one of the silliest inventions of the modern era.

As a strong supporter of the EFF ^[4] and a believer that the DMCA ^[5] is severely flawed, it’s a bit of a shame that it took me so long to make tannerhelland.com copyleft ^[6] friendly…but better late then never, right?

You’ll notice two main changes to the site as of this week.

1) All tannerhelland.com music is now available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License ^[7]. In layman’s terms, this means that anyone can remix, tweak, and build upon these songs – even for commercial reasons – as long as they credit me and license their creations under identical terms.

So please – download the complete tannerhelland.com music collection ^[8] and share it with everyone you know!

2) All source code available on tannerhelland.com is now available under a BSD License ^[9].  I settled on the BSD license after a fair amount of research, and I strongly feel it is the best fit for the style and type of code I provide.  A BSD License allows unlimited redistribution of code for any purpose, provided all copyright notices and disclaimers of warranty are maintained.  Also, my name may not be used for endorsement of a derived work without specific permission.

Importantly, the BSD license also allows my code to be incorporated into proprietary commercial products – including closed-source products.  This clause is important to me.  While I admire the GPL ^[10]/LGPL ^[11] and similar licenses – and feel they play a very important role in the software ecosystem – I also understand that many programmers make a living writing closed-source software.  I want all the code on this site to be freely usable by anyone, including those who write closed-source software for a living.  My code and tutorials are meant to be educational and informative, and I hope they help as many programmers as possible to solve otherwise difficult problems.

As always, if you would like to use any site content (music, source code, or others) under a license other than what is explicitly stated on the content’s page, please contact me ^[12].

In the meantime, I would strongly recommend learning more about the EFF ^[13] and the service(s) they provide ^[14].  Also, Creative Commons has an excellent site ^[15] with boatloads of information on sharing your work without sacrificing ownership or copyrights.