Standard non-copyleft free license?
Admidst the storms of controversy, I'd just like to ask a (hopefully) simple
question... ;-)
The GPL is the "clear winner" for being a maximally "standard" copyleft free
license.
The BSD license is apparently not directly usable (mentions Berkeley
explicitly, etc), so these licenses are generally called "BSD-type". Or,
AFAIK, anyway.
Is there a *standard* boilerplate for a "BSD-type" or say "maximally free"
non-copyleft license (if BSD doesn't cut it). The only requirement I want to
have is that credit is given correctly and that it positively asserts that I
own copyright in the work. Probably also the "no warranty" language. No
advertising clauses are needed. ;-)
I am delivering work on a contract, and this is (to be) part of the contract
terms -- i.e. that they get the code with no strings, but it isn't theirs.
That is, they can't turn around and charge me a license fee to use or
redistribute the code I wrote! The important distinction is to prevent it
from being considered a "work for hire" in the usual sense.
I don't want to ruffle their feathers by making them consider all the license
details -- I'd like to just say "BSD license" or some appropriate standard
that they can live with. They could, of course, sell the software to someone
else, but the usual caveats about selling free software (i.e. you can be
easily undersold) apply. That might be valuable to them if they wanted to
build significantly on it, though.
Also it must be freely convertable to GPL, as, if I build anything on it
*after* the contract, I'll want to have copyleft on the changes.
The package is probably going to be a collection of Debian packaging scripts
to install a large suite of scientific applications using apt/apt-get, so it
is I think on-topic, since I will most likely want to contribute the code for
use by Debian packagers (I don't think Debian will accept it directly for
policy reasons, but it shouldn't be too much of a fix-up -- basically I need
to use a weird prefix to keep my installation out of the way of the OS and
optionally-selectable, it also has to load on Red Hat and Solaris, etc.).
If no such standard boilerplate license exists -- would it be reasonable to
propose publishing one with instructions, along the same lines as the FSF has
done with the GPL?
Thanks,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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