> I did run strings on some Windows XP command line tools just out of > curiosity and while I was able to find the copyright line I couldn't > find any license.
The license on that code says: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. What you ran strings on is not "source code". It was the binary. Then license on the original code continues: * 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. Well, if you take your Microsoft documentation, and dig really deep, you will find the whole notice copied into it there. Go ahead, you'll find it. Can't take that long. Furthermore, older copies of the license used to say: * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software * must display the following acknowledgement: * This product includes software developed by the University of * California, Berkeley and its contributors. And.. once again, older copies of Windows DID follow that rule, too, just like Sun and everyone else. The only vendor who ever failed to do this was AT&T / USL, who included modified BSD manuals in their Unixware commercial distributions, and that mistake resulted in USL losing the USL v BSDI & University of California lawsuit. (I have simplified the situation, s/losing/settling at a serious loss/). That particular term was rescinded on July 22, 1999 by UCB, and since that time vendors are no longer required to follow term 3. Some still do, though, since their licensing-in-advertising people haven't heard the news. After UCB recinded that term, Todd Miller and I went and found all the code in the tree where that license term had been copied, and used by a new author -- and we contacted those author and asked them to recind their term too. I think, in the end, they all did. As far as I know the 3-term BSD license is totally dead, except in NetBSD, where their group still pushes developers to place new code under a full 4-term license. Sometimes we reluctantly include such code, hoping that one day this situation can be improved. > I don't want to reanimate this thread, I want it to die as quickly as > possible but I was just wondering why they don't need to provide the > license conditions. Microsoft, like everyone else, follows the license to a 'T'. Sorry, I probably gave you more information than you wanted.
