On 10/01/15 18:16, Michael Bradley wrote:
Now suppose Project B’s source code is derived from Project A’s source code,
but the maintainer of Project B wishes to use a different license. In an effort
to avoid confusion, Project B has that different license text at the head of
each of its source code files, while Project A's original license text has been
moved off to a file bundled in Project B's source distributions, e.g.
“licenses/ORIGINAL-PROJECTA-LICENSE.txt”.
Would that be in compliance with the “retain” language in clause #1 of the
3-Clause BSD license? Is there any case law to that effect or to the contrary?
References to legal write-ups on this question (or similar) would be
appreciated.
This is not legal advice, but in my opinion the least B could get away
with is the inclusion of a reference to the file in the source files
derived from A, and possibly also a statement that the file cannot be
redistributed without the licences file.
Especially given the shortness of the BSD licence, I would think the
community expectation would be that the source file contained the text
of both licences, indicating who owned the copyrights under each. The
paragon would be to also identify in the code which bits came under
which copyright.
If B had not created any new copyright in the file, e.g. they did no
more than change some customisation parameter, I would say the file
should only contain A's copyright notice, and licence terms.
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