Re: Bug#649530: [copyright-format] clearer definitions and more consistent License: stanza specification
On 25/12/12 12:34, Ximin Luo wrote:
> Example:
>
> | Files: X
> | Copyright: A
> | License: BSD-3-Clause
> | Copyright 2012 A
> | terms etc
I don't think this is the problem: if the first two lines of
/usr/share/common-licenses/BSD ("Copyright (c)... All rights reserved")
were ignored or removed, that still wouldn't leave license which can be
reused "intact".
The more problematic (for license re-use) parts of BSD-3-Clause are:
> 3. Neither the name of the University nor ...
...
> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS''...
> ... IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS ...
which only makes sense if a major copyright holder is a university whose
legally-responsible officers are called "regents".
Some pieces of "BSD"-licensed software use a different license wording
that replaces "University", "Regents" with a more appropriate term for
the particular entity that holds the copyright. The variant of the
3-clause BSD license quoted by opensource.org replaces "University" with
a placeholder "<ORGANIZATION>", and "REGENTS" with "COPYRIGHT HOLDERS",
but this is not done consistently. Here are a couple of sample packages
with "non-canonical" 3-clause BSD licenses:
abiword: Neither the name of AbiSource Corporation B.V. nor the names of
other contributors ... PROVIDED BY ABISOURCE CORPORATION B.V. AND OTHER
CONTRIBUTORS ...
avahi (dns-sd compatibility layer): Neither the name of Apple Computer,
Inc. ("Apple") nor the names of its contributors ... PROVIDED BY APPLE
AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS ...
These are, strictly speaking, different licenses; if you quote the wrong
one, you have not reproduced the list of conditions as required by the
license. As such, it's not necessarily appropriate to give them the same
copyright-format name, and the each version of the license text used
(apart from the one in common-licenses) must be reproduced in full.
S
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