Re: bsd modified bsd clarification
Hi Don Charles, On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 09:32:39AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: first of all let me just clarify that DEP-5 is only a proposal now, and that it can be subjected to many changes before it is accepted. Ah - in that case, would you recommend using this format now, accepting that I may have to change it later, or hold off and not use it at all until it's more stable? In a package where the copyright and license was clearer (assuming such a mythical thing exists), I might not have considered using it, but in Dwoo there's at least modified BSD and LGPL (actually I didn't consider whether mixing these was a problem, I hope it's not!), and different authors/copyright holders of different plugins, so it seemed to make sense. Whichever solution is adopted in DEP-5 to underline that license A is derived from license B, unless your program is part of the BSD distribution and is copyright by the regents of the university of California, you can not use the copy in /usr/share/common-license and have to include it verbatim. Luckily, it is short :) Yep, I already did that, no problems there. I wonder if http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ might be more clearer about this. I would submit a patch, but as has been made clear, I am no license expert ;) Thank you both for your replies. Cheers, Penny -- /* --- Penny Leach | http://mjollnir.org | http://she.geek.nz GPG: 8347 00FC B5BF 6CC0 0FC9 AB90 1875 120A A30E C22B --- */ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: bsd modified bsd clarification
On Thu, 05 Nov 2009, Penny Leach wrote: So far so good. Except I've come into a bit of trouble with what to use for the Modified BSD. Debian's license information [2] states that Modified BSD is a common license, meaning that it is to be found inside /usr/share/common-licenses. It actually isn't in common-licenses, because /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD is specific to the Regents of the University of California. [It is a commonly used license, but every time someone besides the UC Regents uses it, they modify the original clause three (which was deleted by the UC Regents), or clause four, so no one else can reference common-licenses.] Which brings me to the quandary of what to put inside debian/copyright. I guess I can put Modified BSD and include the license verbatim, as Dwoo ships it in LICENSE, except that now of course I'm curious ;) Right, that's exactly what you should do. Don Armstrong -- The smallest quantity of bread that can be sliced and toasted has yet to be experimentally determined. In the quantum limit we must necessarily encounter fundamental toast particles which the author will unflinchingly designate here as croutons. -- Cser, Jim. Nanotechnology and the Physical Limits of Toastability. AIR 1:3, June, 1995. http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: bsd modified bsd clarification
Le Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 04:00:45PM +0100, Penny Leach a écrit : Furthermore, the new debian/copyright policy [1] doesn't mention Modified BSD at all - it just references BSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD. Dear Penny, first of all let me just clarify that DEP-5 is only a proposal now, and that it can be subjected to many changes before it is accepted. One of the changes that I would like to propose when I have enough time to draft a patch, is to introduce a syntax for licenses ‘similar to’ other licenses, when they were derived from a very common license by only changing some people, company or brand names. As Don explained, there is only one BSD license, the one where the regents of the university of California are coyright holders. And since they used their copy rights to change the license in the past, there is no program that is licensed under the ‘old BSD’ license. Nevertheless, there are some that have license similar to it, and were not affected by the removal of the advertisement clause because the copyright holder is not the same. Whichever solution is adopted in DEP-5 to underline that license A is derived from license B, unless your program is part of the BSD distribution and is copyright by the regents of the university of California, you can not use the copy in /usr/share/common-license and have to include it verbatim. Luckily, it is short :) Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
