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

[Sergio Belkin]

2011/5/13 Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com>:
> 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).

Thanks for your analysis.

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


I think as you, Richard. Advertising and attribution is not the sam
ething. Please consider for example clause 3 and 66 of the OpenSSL
license (http://www.openssl.org/source/license.html).

So, we agree that both cyrus-sasl and UpTools has neither BSD nor "BSD
with advertising". "BSD with attribution" does not exist by now. Could
"BSD with attribution" be appended to the list mentioned in
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Good_Licenses ?

I look forward your answer in order to make the proper corrections and
set the License tag in the right way.

Thanks in advance"

>
> - RF
>
>
> --
> Richard E. Fontana
> Red Hat, Inc.
>



-- 
--
Sergio Belkin  http://www.sergiobelkin.com
Watch More TV http://sebelk.blogspot.com
LPIC-2 Certified - http://www.lpi.org