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3-clause BSD?

3-clause BSD?

2006-09-10 by AIDA Shinra

Milter-greylist's license consists of 3 clauses but not a so-called
3-clause BSD. "[23]-clause BSD" usually implies GPL compatibility, but
milter-greylist is not. We have three options:

1. Call its license as "BSD-variant open source license". No legal
problem but a bit of complexity.

2. Add the following clause. Moderate legal problems.
  4. Neither the name of Emmanuel Dreyfus nor the names of
     its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
     derived from this software without specific prior written
     permission.

3. Remove the following clause. I'm not sure it is legal to remove a
license restriction without agreements of all code-level contributors.
Fortunately, this clause does not seem to refer any legal rights or
owes of any contributors other than the original author.
  3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
     software must display the following acknowledgement:
         This product includes software developed by Emmanuel Dreyfus

Re: [milter-greylist] 3-clause BSD?

2006-09-10 by manu@netbsd.org

AIDA Shinra <shinra@...> wrote:

> 2. Add the following clause. Moderate legal problems.
>   4. Neither the name of Emmanuel Dreyfus nor the names of
>      its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
>      derived from this software without specific prior written
>      permission.

If that makes your life easier, I can add such a clause 

-- 
Emmanuel Dreyfus
http://hcpnet.free.fr/pubz
manu@...

Re: [milter-greylist] 3-clause BSD?

2006-09-10 by Oliver Fromme

AIDA Shinra wrote:
 > Milter-greylist's license consists of 3 clauses but not a so-called
 > 3-clause BSD.

Right.  But what's the problem with that?  The existing
license is perfectly acceptable.

 > "[23]-clause BSD" usually implies GPL compatibility, but
 > milter-greylist is not. We have three options:

The most obvious options is to keep evrything as-is.
Why do you think something has to be changed?

 > 2. Add the following clause. Moderate legal problems.
 >   4. Neither the name of Emmanuel Dreyfus nor the names of
 >      its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
 >      derived from this software without specific prior written
 >      permission.

Please excuse me, but that's nonsense.  Adding such a
clause does NOT add any value to the license.  Instead,
it makes it more complicated, without reason.

 > 3. Remove the following clause. I'm not sure it is legal to remove a
 > license restriction without agreements of all code-level contributors.
 > Fortunately, this clause does not seem to refer any legal rights or
 > owes of any contributors other than the original author.
 >   3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
 >      software must display the following acknowledgement:
 >          This product includes software developed by Emmanuel Dreyfus

Removing that clause would make the license a so-called
"2-clause BSD license".  The most important difference
of that is that it would be GPL-compatible.  The current
license (with the 3rd clause) is not GPL-compatible.

Emmanual has to decide himself whether he wants to change
that and make milter-greylist GPL-compatible.  However,
any contributors whose code is included in milter-greylist
would also have to agree to such a change.

Personally, I wouldn't change anything.  Past experience
with other open-source projects shows that license changes
often lead to problems.  Therefore I recommend to change
it _only_ if there's a very good reason to do so.  There
doesn't seem to be a good reason here.

Just my 2 Euro cents.  :-)

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
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and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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