There is a question by one of the opensource developers of NanoTCAD whether his code which is a 4-clause BSD is allowed to be packaged in Fedora Electronics Lab or not.
I will contact Fedora-Legal and sort out this issue.
The license is as follows
LICENSE
Copyright (c) 2004-2008, G. Fiori, G. Iannaccone, University of Pisa. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. - All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by G.Fiori and G.Iannaccone at University of Pisa. - Neither the name of the University of Pisa nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY G.FIORI AND G.IANNACCONE *AS IS* AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL G.FIORI, AND G.IANNACCONE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
On 10/14/2009 07:35 AM, Ziyad Saeed wrote:
There is a question by one of the opensource developers of NanoTCAD whether his code which is a 4-clause BSD is allowed to be packaged in Fedora Electronics Lab or not.
Ziyad,
It is permitted, but it is worth mentioning that because of the "advertising" clause, this license is GPL incompatible, which may cause problems with other software.
The original author of the BSD license (Regents of the University of California) has stopped using the advertising clause, and has withdrawn it from all code for which they are the copyright holder. I would strongly advise the NanoTCAD developer to also drop the advertising clause.
For more information, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#UC_Berkeley_advertising_clause
Thanks,
Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal
Thank you Tom for the replyI have another developer of Genuis 3D. Its a proprietary code so far, but they have plans of open sourcing it. However, the developer mentioned that it will be GPL with some additions. I guess that would make it GPL incompatible.
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa@redhat.comwrote:
On 10/14/2009 07:35 AM, Ziyad Saeed wrote:
There is a question by one of the opensource developers of NanoTCAD whether his code which is a 4-clause BSD is allowed to be packaged in Fedora Electronics Lab or not.
Ziyad,
It is permitted, but it is worth mentioning that because of the "advertising" clause, this license is GPL incompatible, which may cause problems with other software.
The original author of the BSD license (Regents of the University of California) has stopped using the advertising clause, and has withdrawn it from all code for which they are the copyright holder. I would strongly advise the NanoTCAD developer to also drop the advertising clause.
For more information, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#UC_Berkeley_advertising_clause
Thanks,
Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal
"ZS" == Ziyad Saeed myschizobuddy@gmail.com writes:
ZS> Thank you Tom for the replyI have another developer of Genuis ZS> 3D. Its a proprietary code so far, but they have plans of open ZS> sourcing it. However, the developer mentioned that it will be GPL ZS> with some additions. I guess that would make it GPL incompatible.
Please note that you cannot add restrictions to the GPL, you can only include additional permissions. Or, at least, you can try, but those who receive the work are entitled to simply ignore those restrictions.
From GPLv2 section 7:
" All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. "
Adding permissions to the GPL does not render the resulting work GPL incompatible as far as I know. (OF course, I'm not a lawyer.)
- J<
On 10/14/2009 03:08 PM, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
Adding permissions to the GPL does not render the resulting work GPL incompatible as far as I know. (OF course, I'm not a lawyer.)
This is generally correct, but there are ways around that clause, so it is not safe to assume that.
~spot
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Jason L Tibbitts III -
Tom Callaway -
Ziyad Saeed