Re: Licence query

[Måns Rullgård <mans@mansr.com>]

Stephen Gran <sgran@debian.org> writes:

> This one time, at band camp, Måns Rullgård said:
>> There is one thing about that license that strikes me as slightly odd.
>> 
>>   Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
>>   including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
>>   freely, subject to the following restrictions:
>> 
>> In the above grant of permissions, I see no explicit grant to
>> distribute modified versions.  It is fairly obvious from the remainder
>> of the license that such permission was intended, but it should still
>> be explicitly mentioned.
>
> "Permission is granted to ... alter it and redistribute it freely" seems
> like it does just that?

The first "it" is clearly referring to the unmodified source.  The
second "it" has no other noun to refer to, so must also be referring
to the unmodified source.  Had the text said something like "and
redistribute it freely, with or without modification", all would be
much clearer.  The BSD license uses this precise phrase.

One can never be too careful with legal language.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mans@mansr.com