Re: right of publicity, or why no-advertising clauses are not necessary
Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 12:14:51AM +1000, Luke Mewburn wrote:
>>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.
So why does the GNU Project list the "modified BSD license" on their
licenses page under "GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses"
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html), when the version of
that license they link to on the XFree86 page
(http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#5) contains:
> 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote
> products derived from this software without specific prior written
> permission.
I believe the GNU Project's rationale for this is the same as the
explanation you provided for why these clauses are not necessary: since
you cannot do what they prohibit even if they were not present in the
license, they are not additional restrictions above the GPL.
- Josh Triplett
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