On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 12:14:51AM +1000, Luke Mewburn wrote: > On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 03:54:32AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > | For what it's worth, I think the NetBSD Foundation has already reached > | this conclusion, which is why they use a 2-clause form of the BSD > | license, with both the compelled-advertising and no-advertising clauses > | removed. > > Actually, the vote to remove clause 3 (advertising), or clauses 2 > (documentation) & 3 (advertising), did not obtain a majority, so > the NetBSD Foundation license is still the "classic" 4 clause BSD. Ah. Okay, I thought I had seen the 2-clause license applied to works copyrighted by the NetBSD Foundation. Am I mistaken, or is this not the same thing as the foundation having voted on it? > Note that other organisations have contributed code to NetBSD > under what's effectively a clause 1 & 4 license, which is > considered less onerous restrictions on third party binary > distributors because they don't have to compile a list of > copyrights for their documentation to meet clause 2 and > clause 3. An example of this can be found at: > http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/sys/arch/mips/sibyte/dev/sbmac.c?rev=1.19&content-type=text/plain > > (FWIW: I understand that this should be GPL compatible) I don't think it is. This license is clearly related to the BSD license but is not simply the original 4-clause BSD license with parts deleted. There are wording changes as well. Anyway, it's not GPL-compatible because it says: * The "Broadcom Corporation" name may not be * used to endorse or promote products derived from this software * without the prior written permission of Broadcom Corporation. This is an additional restriction not present in the GNU GPL. I think all licenses need, if the copyright holder is really terrified of such things, is to put an *informative* notice at the end of the license, after the warranty disclaimer to make it clear that it's not a "condition" under which the copyright license terms attach. (Oh yeah, it is nonsensical to make the warranty disclaimer an enumerated condition of the copyright license's attachment. Whether and how warranty can be disclaimed is determined by state laws, is irrelvant to copyright, and in most cases I'm aware of, a consumer cannot waive his warranty rights -- especially when no contract is formed, as is the case in a copyright license extended to the public.) E.g.: No permission is granted by this license to make use of (the name or likeness|any trade name, trademark, or logo) of $COPYRIGHT_HOLDER in advertising, promotional materials, or endorsements. Private individuals would probably use "the name or likeness", and corporations would probably use "any trade name, trade mark, or logo". I believe the above wording gets the message across without carelessly overreaching -- and of itself, it's GPL-compatible. > (speaking personally, not officially for TNF) Thanks very much for clarifying the issue. -- G. Branden Robinson | The software said it required Debian GNU/Linux | Windows 3.1 or better, so I branden@debian.org | installed Linux. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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