Re: Please pass judgement on X-Oz licence: free or nay?
Brian Thomas Sniffen writes:
> Well, there's only one potential problem:
>
> > * Except as contained in this notice, the name of the copyright holder(s)
> > * and author(s) shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote
> > * the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written
> > * authorization from the copyright holder(s) and author(s).
>
> That's clearly GPL-incompatible -- I don't know that that's a problem
> for the relevant code, but I'd imagine it would be for *some* X code.
>
> I think it's right on the border of freedom, but on the non-free side
> of that border. It prohibits some true statements -- if I'm trying to
> sell some kiosk to a third party, and he asks me who wrote the
> autoconfig code, I *can't tell him*. That seems pretty weird, in a
> situation in which I allegedly have freedom.
>
> I can't even put "Copyright 2004 Ben Bitdiddle, some parts Copyright
> 200x David Dawes" in there. Heck, I can't even write this message,
> talking about how great X.Org's software is and how much I love the
> autoconfig stuff by David Dawes! This very paragraph violates that
> license.
>
> Surely that can't be Free.
Can you explain how those uses of his name are advertising or
otherwise promote "the sale, use or other dealings in this Software"?
You are not saying "use this code because David Dawes wrote it" --
which is what that clause wants to prohibit. I'm not sure that any
straightforward reading supports attribution as advertising or
promotion.
That clause does not seem sufficiently different from the third clause
of a three-clause BSD license ("The name of the author may not be used
to endorse or promote products derived from this software without
specific prior written permission.") to affect either DFSG freeness or
GPL compatibility.
Michael Poole
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