Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On 2004-03-01 00:46:12 +0000 Ben Reser <ben@reser.org> wrote:
Actually this is Clause 3 from the Apache Software License version
1.1.
No, it is not. It is similar, but the wording is worse. Elsewhere were
quoted parts of ASL 1.1, but I think it incomplete that clause 3 was
not. Here it is:
* 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution,
* if any, must include the following acknowledgment:
* "This product includes software developed by the
* Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/)."
* Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software
itself,
* if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear.
For no obvious reason, the X-Oz licence has the lawyerbomb "in the
same form and location" added twice. This could be a symptom of the
problem: X-Oz looks like an obfuscated ASL 1.1. Obfuscation is not a
good trait in a licence author.
It's been well known to be GPL incompatible.
Indeed. For something as basic as X, that should kill our enthusiasm
for this.
[Clause 4]
This is interpretation is seriously reaching. The Apache license and
the BSD license have similar clauses. I'd argue that the Apache
license
is much broader here actually.
I think the Apache licence is fairly narrow. The X-Oz one includes the
lawyerbomb "or otherwise" in what it forbids and that seems overbroad,
exceeding what a free software licence can do.
Is the clause necessary? In my opinion No. But it has nothing to do
with the DFSG.
http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html Q8 or
http://people.debian.org/~asuffield/wrong/dfsg_guidelines.html might
help explain what you're seeing here.
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