Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
The original license is available at http://www.x-oz.com/licenses.html
and is reproduced below:
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Copyright © 2003, 2004 X-Oz Technologies. All Rights Reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials
provided with the distribution.
3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if
any, must include the following acknowledgment:
"This product includes software developed by X-Oz Technologies
(http://www.x-oz.com/)."
Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself,
if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear.
4. Except as contained in this notice, the name of X-Oz Technologies
shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale,
use or other dealings in this Software without prior written
authorization from X-Oz Technologies.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
IN NO EVENT SHALL X-OZ TECHNOLOGIES OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,
STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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Clause 3 is a complex statement, which appears to be derived from the
obsolete four-clause BSD license. Although it appears that this clause
can be satisfied by including the license text as end-user
documentation, the author has refused to make this point explicit in the
license. Alternatively, it has an additional option for providing this
statement within the software itself, which looks like it could be used
to avoid this additional requirement on the documentation. Since it is
difficult to ascertain the author's intent, we are not sure whether it
violates DFSG 9 by contaminating the documentation with which it is
distributed.
Clause 4, however, is more worrisome. When compared to the
normal three-clause BSD license, we see that the X-Oz license is worded
very strongly. It not only forbids promotion and endorsement, it also
forbids the fair-use of the name "X-Oz Technologies", e.g. in a magazine
review of the Software, without prior written permission.
We believe that this licence is not DFSG-free. and we want X-Oz
Technologies to address the problems presented. We recommend avoiding
this licence at present.
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