Re: FreeBSD legacy license with restrictions on copyright notice placement

[Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com>]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 4:03 PM Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> wrote:
>
> >>>>> "Richard" == Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com> writes:
>
>     Richard> I'm curious if there are opinions on why "must retain the
>     Richard> above copyright notice immediately at the beginning of the
>     Richard> file" is consistent with the DFSG. This is one of a variety
>     Richard> of 1990s FreeBSD 3-clause BSD variants with such a feature.
>
> Well, under DFSG 4, the license could have required that no
> modifications be made to the source file at all:
>
> >    4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
> >       The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in
> >       modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch
> >       files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the
> >       program at build time. The license must explicitly permit
> >       distribution of software built from modified source code. The
> >       license may require derived works to carry a different name or
> >       version number from the original software. (This is a compromise.
> >       The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files,
> >       source or binary, from being modified.)
>
> So, it would be DFSG compatible if the license required an unmodified
> file be distributed that was patched at build time.
> This is clearly a lot better than that, and appears to grant our users
> the same freedoms as would be the case if DFSG 4 were needed.

Ah, good point. I had forgotten about this.

Richard