On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 04:49:23PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Joel Aelwyn:
>
> > 4) The DFSG tradition is muddy (at best) on whether it refers to the
> > 4-clause or 3-clause variant of the license -
>
> It's pretty clear: The DFSG are older than the wide-spread adoption of
> the 3-clause BSD license. Until UC Berkeley relicensed the Berkeley
> Software Distribution under the 3-clause variant, our web pages
> reproduced the 4-clause variant.
>
> Other licenses also contain advertising clauses, and are still deemed
> DFSG-free.
I know of at least 2 people who were under the impression that it was
talking about the 3-clause variant, when they agreed to the Social Contract
and DFSG. While both parties accepted the correction with good grace, it is
not so self-evident as one might assume (I'm not arguing that it doesn't
refer to the 4-clause, but I'm also not going to argue that that might
have been based on things that would not, perhaps, be argued the same way
today).
And, in practice, a lot of it still boils down to what the copyright holder
views the *practical* requirements of fufilling the clause to mean. If it
means "make sure the phrase appears in the debian/copyright file", that's
not terribly onerous. If it means "Make sure the clause appears on your
website in a prominent place, and on all flyers promoting Debian's presence
at a trade show or other event", that could be a lot less practical.
To date, thankfully, I have not run into a licensor that required the
latter, and many don't even require the former (though in practice, I try
to make a good faith effort to put it there, as the most public place that
is guaranteed to be present).
--
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
: :' :
`. `'
`-
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