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Re: Another extended BSD licence :-/



On 17.08.2010 13:39, Simon Richter wrote:
Hi,

I have been asked to provide packages for a small piece of software that
uses this licence:

     This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
     warranty.  In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
     arising from the use of this software.

     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:

     1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
        claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
        in a product or c64-release, an acknowledgment in the product
        documentation or credits would be appreciated. Or beer!
     2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
        misrepresented as being the original software.
     3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
     4. If you alter this software and release it, you must also provide the
        source. You may not turn this into yet-another-windows-only-c64-
        software. The software's platform independance and portability must
        be maintained, no x86-only assembly code (unless there's also a plain
        C version of it), no Windows-only API shit. If you violate this,
        pestilence shall come upon you, and DeeKay shall come to your house
        and format your harddrive to install Linux. Your C64 will be
        confiscated and you will be forced to use a Sinclair Spectrum ZX81
        to do all your coding - with its shitty membrane keyboard!


It is not a BSD like license: "you must also provide the source.",
so nearly a copyleft with very few requirements.


Anyway it is "non-free", because:
"The software's platform independance and portability must
be maintained, no x86-only assembly code (unless there's also a plain
C version of it), no Windows-only API shit. "

This limits what/how you can modify it, which is again DFSG.
What does it mean in Debian? We should write patches so that
we must support Windows and MacOS X? (Or maybe on mainframe
and also strange systems with maybe strange libraries?)

PS: I have a C64. With this license the author reclaims the ownership
of my C64 if I do POSIX-only changes.

ciao
	cate


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