On Tue, 2026-06-16 at 08:42 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: > > On Mon, 15 Jun 2026 16:55:11 +0300 Adrian Bunk wrote: > > > > > 4-clause BSD with the advertising clause has always been > > > recognized > > > as DFSG-free (and is also listed at [1]): > > > > > > All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this > > > software must display the following acknowledgement: This > > > product > > > includes software developed by the <copyright holder>. > > Le Tue, Jun 16, 2026 at 12:07:07AM +0200, Francesco Poli a écrit : > > > > Yes, although it is obnoxious, deprecated, problematic and > > almost everywhere recommended against, it has been traditionally > > considered acceptable with respect to the DFSG. > > I searched for "All advertising materials mentioning features" in the > Debian sources and it looks like the number of different copyright > holders for which we accepted software under the 4-clause BSD may > be not so large. > > So maybe the DFSG team could decide that we gave an exception to the > DFSG to these copyright holders only, that we note that it pushes on > our > users the duty to check the copyright file of every package they use > in > case they want to mention them in advertisements, and that because > this > is too unreasonable we will not grant exceptions anymore to new > packages, for the 4-clause BSD and for any other similar license? > > We could also make a Lintian tag that asks the maintainer to make a > comment in debian/copyright for UCSC Berkeley-licensed code that the > advertisement clause has been revoked on January 31st 2012. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#3-clause_license_(%22BSD_License_2.0%22,_%22Revised_BSD_License%22,_%22New_BSD_License%22,_or_%22Modified_BSD_License%22) > > Lastly we could ask politely to the other copyright holders if they > were willing to make the same change.
This seems an excellent idea - I can really get on board with it. Thanks, Andrew McMillan -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Porirua, New Zealand +64 (27) 288 6741 Your society will be sought by people of taste and refinement. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
