Re: Please pass judgement on X-Oz licence: free or nay?
On 2004-08-09 10:38:45 +0100 Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org> wrote:
I don't see the difference. I mean, I see the difference that one can
be
read as an "assertion" and the other can be read as a "clause". But I
don't see how that affects any practical or legal conclusions. In
other
words, if I write a license like the BSD one, but append "You will
wear
a hat on Fridays." I think it will be clear to everyone, including a
judge, that I intend that to be a requirement to use the freedoms set
forth in the license, even though it's just an "assertion" rather
than a
"clause".
That's not the impression I have, especially given the "clarification"
posts from X-Oz. Does someone know the legal reasoning of this? Would
the same hold if you appended "You may not wear a hat on Fridays"
which I think is closer to the BSD wording?
MJ Ray wrote:
No-one found a licence with a similar *condition* in it.
The 3rd clause of the 3 clause BSD license.
That says "may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software" while the X-Oz one says "shall not be used in
advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in
this Software". There's the difference in verb, which I think is
substantial, and I think X-Oz has added sufficient lawyerbombs to make
me a lot more uncomfortable with it than the 3 clause BSD one.
I suspect we also have more postitive clarifications about the BSD
one. It is possible we will get a bizarre interpretation from a
particular licensor, but we'll deal with that when it happens.
I made a case elsewhere that
the X wording is actually less restrictive because it only affects the
original software, where the BSD clause affects all derived software.
Do both affect derived software, because we need copyright permission
for the original in order to use the derived, which would otherwise
infringe copyright of the original?
--
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