[Fedora-legal-list] Question about BSD style license

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 01:06:50PM -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> The clause that causes GPL problems in the original BSD was the
> following license terms:
> 
> 
> 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must
> display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed
> by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
> 
> 
> That would seem equivalent to
> 
> >  * 4. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following
> >  *    acknowledgment: 'This product includes software developed by the
> >  *    "Universidad de Palermo, Argentina" (http://www.palermo.edu/).'
> 
> 
> so it would seem that your software is BSD with advertising clause.

I don't agree that it is equivalent to BSD with advertising clause.
The question is whether the acknowledgement clause makes the license
GPL-incompatible in the same way that the advertising clause in the
old BSD license made it GPL-incompatible.

GPLv3 explicitly permits incorporation of code covered by terms the
require "preservation of specified reasonable ... author attributions
in that material". I think that the way this acknowledgement
requirement is worded is consistent with that. There is some
uncertainty over whether that clause in GPLv3 was intended to codify
established practice under GPLv2 or set a new rule, and I know there
is at least one license where the FSF has said, post-GPLv3, that the
license was GPLv2-incompatible but GPLv3-compatible based on some sort
of acknowledgement requirement. So this might be (at least in the
FSF's influential view) one of those strange cases where the license
is GPLv2-incompatible but GPLv3-compatible, but maybe not. We'll have
to figure that issue out (unless we've done so already).

But anyway, I think both "BSD" and "BSD with advertising" are
incorrect license tags here. Maybe "BSD with attribution" would work?

- RF


-- 
Richard E. Fontana
Red Hat, Inc.