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The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License ======================================================= Following on from a vote amongst the membership of the NetBSD Foundation, and in recognition of the changing face of software licensing, the Foundation has changed its recommended license to be a 2 clause BSD license. A template version of this new license is included at the bottom of this email. This recommended license is the one that the Foundation strongly encourages its contributors to use when assigning copyright to the Foundation. At the same time, all the code which was contributed to the NetBSD Foundation has been modified to use the new 2-clause NetBSD license. The change in license has come about because of a number of factors: + we have seen organisations and people concerned about the old clause 3 (the advertising clause) in the license, to the extent where NetBSD code could not be used in commercial products; the new license means that these concerns are no longer valid + UCB moved some time ago to remove clause 3 from the code contributed to UCB; this change mirrors that one + we have seen some instances where clause 3 was ignored by groups and organisations + the members of the NetBSD Foundation (i.e. its developers) no longer considered clause 4 (the "endorsement" clause) to be useful in today's software world Martin Husemann has gone through our trees and modified the licences, where applicable. The first pass of this sweep changed over 5900 files in src alone. The src diffs were more than 5.5 MB. The final number of files was 7104. We believe that all changes are correct (they were proof-read prior to being applied), but there is always the chance that some have been missed, particularly some which were originally contributed to TNF with a 3 clause license, or which may contain typos meaning that our scripts could not identify them properly. If you (the user community) do find any of these, please could you let us know about them. Our thanks to Martin for this massive piece of work. Third parties are encouraged to change the license on any files which have a 4-clause license contributed to the NetBSD Foundation to a 2-clause license. We would also encourage you to inform us about these files, so that we can continue to track the many places in which NetBSD is used. So the NetBSD Foundation is today asking its contributors to use the new 2 clause NetBSD license in any software that is contributed, since we firmly believe that it serves the NetBSD community - its users and developers and contributers, commercial entities and academic research - in the best manner possible. Alistair Crooks President The NetBSD Foundation /*- * Copyright (c) 2008 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. * All rights reserved. * * This code is derived from software contributed to The NetBSD Foundation * by * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. 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. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE NETBSD FOUNDATION, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS * ``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 THE FOUNDATION OR CONTRIBUTORS * 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. */ (Log in to post comments)
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 22, 2008 15:56 UTC (Sun) by pphaneuf (subscriber, #23480) [Link] It's about time they dropped the advertising clause, but I'm curious about dropping the endorsement clause. Why was this a problem? So now I can go and make a NetBSD distribution and say "the NetBSD Foundation think this is great!" on the box? Even if I put in a bunch of proprietary modifications in there, and it's not really something they'd agree with? I mean, it's not like you need the endorsement of the original copyright owners to exercise your rights with the BSD... Is it because my view is biased by being in mellow Canada, maybe in the US it's not relevant anymore because people sue the hell out of each others directly instead of relying on the license saying you shouldn't?
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 23, 2008 0:18 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] Why do you think you'd be able to say "the NetBSD Foundation think this is great!" now the third clause has been removed? Wouldn't that still be fraud?
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 23, 2008 12:54 UTC (Mon) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] Yes, it would. The endorsement clause was probably removed because it was meaningless. What it said was true whether or not it said it in the license.
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 23, 2008 16:29 UTC (Mon) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] Not necessarily, fraud has to involve more than just lying. Fraud has to involve some form of property theft/damage due to the lying. Lying in itself is not typically illegal. Thankfully so, I might add!
Maybe not fraud Posted Jun 23, 2008 20:37 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I would think damage to one's reputation (libel or defamation) would be more appropriate than fraud: according to the wikipedia article it comes from late Roman law, so it has to be well covered in most occidental legislations.
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 24, 2008 2:00 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] The wording of the third clause is: Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. If people buy your product based on NetBSD because you've told them that the NetBSD Founddation endorses it, when they haven't given such an endorsement, you have deceived them and committed fraud. I'm not saying that all lying is illegal just that the cases that were covered by the removed clause probably are.
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 24, 2008 16:15 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] If people buy your product based on NetBSD because you've told them that the NetBSD Founddation endorses it, when they haven't given such an endorsement, you have deceived them and committed fraud. Sure, but that is unrelated to the license (unless, of course, if the license explicitly permitted such use). That clause really was just a clarification, it was probably not required.
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 24, 2008 16:51 UTC (Tue) by pphaneuf (subscriber, #23480) [Link] I see, that makes complete sense. I like it better if there is fewer mentions of an entity (such as "the NetBSD Foundation") in the license text, since for my own projects, there isn't usually such an single clear entity, but rather a list of individual developers. If the clause is not really necessary, then I definitely agree with letting it go!
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 27, 2008 17:08 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] What if you advertised, "based on the world-famous operating system developed by the University of California"? That is not fraud or defamation, but is using the University's name to promote the product. No law says you need the University's permission to use its name in this way. But the copyright license clause in question appears to mean you can't distribute the software unless you get that permission.
"mellow Canada" Posted Jun 23, 2008 12:55 UTC (Mon) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] Please don't troll here.
"mellow Canada" Posted Jun 23, 2008 13:08 UTC (Mon) by pphaneuf (subscriber, #23480) [Link] I don't mean to be trolling, I actually like the simplification, I was just wondering why it was there in the first place if it was not necessary (I presume that UCB had actual lawyers write that license in the first place, right? I presume that the MIT had actual lawyers too, and those two are now equivalent, I think). I don't mind so much what the NetBSD project itself uses for its license, but I had similar questions recently when choosing a license for a project of my own. The advertising clause was definitely annoying and silly, I'm glad it's gone. For general information, the following is mentioned as some of the main justification for removing the last clause, beyond being "no longer useful": Some of our developers work for companies in Open Source or research departments where they are allowed to contribute back daytime work to the open source project, but only if the project's license is acceptable to their legal department, and the 4 clause BSD license has been rejected in some cases. That's an excellent reason, although I fail to understand how a "protection" clause for the contributors could cause a legal department to feel threatened to contribute?!
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License Posted Jun 24, 2008 9:32 UTC (Tue) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] If you said that, you'd be lying. If you're lying to customers, in order to profit yourself, you're guilty of fraud. Additionally, you could be guilty of slandering NetBSD, if your product was crap, and you (untruthfully) claimed they approve of it, this could hurt their reputation, and you'd be responsible for that.
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