Beware of Beerware?

Jason L Tibbitts III tibbs at math.uh.edu
Mon Aug 11 14:56:53 UTC 2008


>>>>> "SW" == Simon Wesp <simon at w3sp.de> writes:

SW> Hi, I want to start a review request and the application i packed
SW> is published under Beerware [1] which is not listed in Licensing
SW> [2].

Text of the license:

 * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
 * <phk at FreeBSD.ORG> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
 * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
 * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp

This is basically a joke license like the WTFPL; since the beer
purchase requirement is optional, it seems to me that this is
basically equivalent to the "Copyright only" license at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/CopyrightOnly.  The only
actual requirement is that the notice not be removed, which obviously
does not render the software non-free in pretty much any sense I can
think of.

 - J<




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