Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Henrik Ingo]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Zluty Sysel  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> After conquering many hurdles along the way, it looks like the company
> I am a part of is willing to release a good part of the source code we
> own as open source software. Before we do that though there are a
> couple of outstanding issues that I was hoping someone on this mailing
> list could clarify. We want to use a BSD 3-clause and immediately
> publish the source code on a public code repository allowing
> contributions from users. The questions that have arisen are the
> following:
>
> 1) Clause 2 requires users that distribute the software in binary form
> to reproduce the copyright notice. Since the holder of the copyright
> notice is the very same company that makes the source code available
> to them, would it be possible to selectively waiver this obligation to
> a particular set of users without infringing on the Open Source
> definition or the BSD license itself?

Yes and no.

Since your employer owns the copyright to this software, they of
course have the right to issue any licenses to it that they want. One
such license could bd BSD+waiver, to a specific list of recipients. If
these recipients are your customers, you would probably send them a
letter with such text. Alternatively you could publish the waiver on
your website, etc. Doing this would not be unheard of.

However, since you intend to receive outside contributions, this
becomes trickier. You cannot issue a waiver on behalf of the other
developers who will own copyrights to the code they have contributed.

> If the answer was negative, would including the existence of such a
> waiver in the license itself preclude it from being considered an open
> source software license?

Well, it would no longer be the BSD license and hence it would not be
an OSI approved open source license.

A license with such a waiver may still be open source in the sence
that it would conform to the Open Source Definition. However, if you
wanted general approval for it, you would have to submit it to OSI
review as a new license. I think it's a fair estimate that you might
not succeed in having such a modified license approved though.


> 2) When accepting contributions to the source code repository from
> external sources, I have seen that is sometimes customary to include
> an additional copyright line to the license text included at the top
> of the source file, crediting the person or company that contributed
> the new code or file.
> Would then the waiver mentioned in question 1) be in violation of the
> additional copyright holder(s)' rights?

Yes, as I explained above.

There are some practices in the open source community that could still
help you get around this. For example sometimes a central copyright
holder may require other contributors to assign their rights to the
central entity. (This can be either a for-profit or non-profit
corporation.) In this case the problem goes away, since your employer
would continue to own rights to 100% of the code. Note however that
such contributor agreements / IPR assignments are somewhat unpopular
in the community. The main reasons behind that are that a) they add
bureacratic overhead to the act of contributing, and b) they add
inequality to the contributor community, for example the central
entity may use its right to include the contributed code in closed
source products. In your case, since the code is BSD licensed anyway,
the b) concern may not be so important.

You could also simply say that contributors must accept the waiver,
otherwise you won't receive their contribution. For added legal
safety, you should probably require some kind of signed acceptance of
this. Thus the bureucratic overhead is equivalent to a contributor
agreement anyway.

> 3) When reproducing the copyright notice in binary distributions, must
> one parse all source code files to find out all of the contributors'
> names and include them in full? Or is it enough to simply provide a
> LICENSE file that only credits the original author (the company that
> made the source code available originally) so that users of the source
> code can simply reproduce that particular file in their binary
> distributions?

Yes, I suppose. I don't think this is commonly done though. I've seen
Oracle do it for a short while when they acquired MySQL, but I don't
think they do it anymore.

The BSD requires one to reproduce "The above copyright notice". One
way to avoid this problem would be to enforce a style where the
copyright notice is always the same, such as "The Foo project" or
"MyCompany and contributors". This way it doesn't matter which
individual contributed to each source file. You should of course in
that case maintain some other file, perhaps CONTRIBUTORS.TXT, to
credit the contributors to the project.

Note that losing track of who contributed what code might again be
considered bad practice for other reasons.

henrik



-- 
henrik.i...@avoinelama.fi
+358-40-5697354sk

Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Philippe Ombredanne]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 6:13 PM, Zluty Sysel  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> After conquering many hurdles along the way, it looks like the company
> I am a part of is willing to release a good part of the source code we
> own as open source software. Before we do that though there are a
> couple of outstanding issues that I was hoping someone on this mailing
> list could clarify. We want to use a BSD 3-clause and immediately
> publish the source code on a public code repository allowing
> contributions from users. The questions that have arisen are the
> following:
>
> 1) Clause 2 requires users that distribute the software in binary form
> to reproduce the copyright notice. Since the holder of the copyright
> notice is the very same company that makes the source code available
> to them, would it be possible to selectively waiver this obligation to
> a particular set of users without infringing on the Open Source
> definition or the BSD license itself?
> If the answer was negative, would including the existence of such a
> waiver in the license itself preclude it from being considered an open
> source software license?

As the copyright holder you can do as you please.
You do not need to attribute yourself for your own code, though that
is of course nice anyway ;)
No need for a waiver.
A waiver would be rather an awkward and weird thing.

> 2) When accepting contributions to the source code repository from
> external sources, I have seen that is sometimes customary to include
> an additional copyright line to the license text included at the top
> of the source file, crediting the person or company that contributed
> the new code or file.

Either that or an author file. Simpler is better.

> Would then the waiver mentioned in question 1) be in violation of the
> additional copyright holder(s)' rights?

May be not in violation of their rights but in contradiction with your
eventual obligations.

Think about it this way:
What if you were such an external contributor: you worked hard to
provide code enhancements to this project.
And as a thank you note, you have . nothing. This would not be
great, would it?


> 3) When reproducing the copyright notice in binary distributions, must
> one parse all source code files to find out all of the contributors'
> names and include them in full? Or is it enough to simply provide a
> LICENSE file that only credits the original author (the company that
> made the source code available originally) so that users of the source
> code can simply reproduce that particular file in their binary
> distributions?

This is your call. Projects often create an AUTHORS file to list
contributors to keep things simple.
And/or list the major contributors in the a LICENSE or COPYING.
Again giving credits to contributors is the _right and nice thing_ to do.
(check out the scancode-toolkit if you want to create such a list of
copyrights, disclaimer: I am an author of it)

> Thank you in advance,

In summary, my 2 cents: The BSD license is simple, so keep things simple.
You do not need to credit yourself in your own redistribution.
Forget about adding waivers or other weird things to it: the weirder
your license, the less likely anyone will want to contribute anything.
I would not touch code with such a weird waiver (even with a very long
pole).
And If you are lucky enough to ever receive contributions from others,
giving credit whether required or not is _always_ the right thing and
the nice thing to do.

Embrace open source and be happy!

And IANAL, TINLA
-- 
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Zluty Sysel]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply.

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Philippe Ombredanne
 wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 6:13 PM, Zluty Sysel  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> After conquering many hurdles along the way, it looks like the company
>> I am a part of is willing to release a good part of the source code we
>> own as open source software. Before we do that though there are a
>> couple of outstanding issues that I was hoping someone on this mailing
>> list could clarify. We want to use a BSD 3-clause and immediately
>> publish the source code on a public code repository allowing
>> contributions from users. The questions that have arisen are the
>> following:
>>
>> 1) Clause 2 requires users that distribute the software in binary form
>> to reproduce the copyright notice. Since the holder of the copyright
>> notice is the very same company that makes the source code available
>> to them, would it be possible to selectively waiver this obligation to
>> a particular set of users without infringing on the Open Source
>> definition or the BSD license itself?
>> If the answer was negative, would including the existence of such a
>> waiver in the license itself preclude it from being considered an open
>> source software license?
>
> As the copyright holder you can do as you please.
> You do not need to attribute yourself for your own code, though that
> is of course nice anyway ;)
> No need for a waiver.
> A waiver would be rather an awkward and weird thing.

Well, since the code is distributed under a license that requires
disclosure there was some fear internally that disclosure and license
reproduction would be mandatory for all users of the source code.

>
>> 2) When accepting contributions to the source code repository from
>> external sources, I have seen that is sometimes customary to include
>> an additional copyright line to the license text included at the top
>> of the source file, crediting the person or company that contributed
>> the new code or file.
>
> Either that or an author file. Simpler is better.

That's good to know. An author file would make our lives easier and we
have no problem adding one, the problems come later with the inclusion
of the BSD notice for binary distributions as I'll explain below.

>
>> Would then the waiver mentioned in question 1) be in violation of the
>> additional copyright holder(s)' rights?
>
> May be not in violation of their rights but in contradiction with your
> eventual obligations.
>
> Think about it this way:
> What if you were such an external contributor: you worked hard to
> provide code enhancements to this project.
> And as a thank you note, you have . nothing. This would not be
> great, would it?

We absolutely do not want to hide the contributors from the source
code in the public repository. The fact of maintaining and AUTHORS
file with a list of all contributors is not only acceptable, but
regarded as a bonus guarantee for our users that other eyes have
perused the code and not have found any significant shortcomings.
The problem comes with acknowledging the usage of this codebase in
binary distributions. Some of the future users of this source code are
also our current customers, and some of these customers do not want to
reveal that they are using our particular libraries for their (binary
distributed) product. Given this, let me rephrase: Can we allow these
customers not to reproduce the BSD license text even if our AUTHORS
file contains names and email addresses of people outside of our
company? Because that's really all we're after here, allowing certain
customers not to have to mention that they are using our libraries.


>> 3) When reproducing the copyright notice in binary distributions, must
>> one parse all source code files to find out all of the contributors'
>> names and include them in full? Or is it enough to simply provide a
>> LICENSE file that only credits the original author (the company that
>> made the source code available originally) so that users of the source
>> code can simply reproduce that particular file in their binary
>> distributions?
>
> This is your call. Projects often create an AUTHORS file to list
> contributors to keep things simple.
> And/or list the major contributors in the a LICENSE or COPYING.
> Again giving credits to contributors is the _right and nice thing_ to do.
> (check out the scancode-toolkit if you want to create such a list of
> copyrights, disclaimer: I am an author of it)

As mentioned above, giving credit to all contributors _in the source
code_ is something we want to do. It's the binary distributions that
we're wary of.
Thanks for the tip, we'll take a look but if we already start off with
an AUTHORS file then we might not need to parse the source code at
all. Instead we'll ask contributors to add themselves to that file.

>
>> Thank you in advance,
>
> In summary, my 2 cents: The BSD license is simple, so keep things simple.
> You do not need to credit yourself in your own redistr

Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Zluty Sysel]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply.

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 10:33 PM, Henrik Ingo  wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Zluty Sysel  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> After conquering many hurdles along the way, it looks like the company
>> I am a part of is willing to release a good part of the source code we
>> own as open source software. Before we do that though there are a
>> couple of outstanding issues that I was hoping someone on this mailing
>> list could clarify. We want to use a BSD 3-clause and immediately
>> publish the source code on a public code repository allowing
>> contributions from users. The questions that have arisen are the
>> following:
>>
>> 1) Clause 2 requires users that distribute the software in binary form
>> to reproduce the copyright notice. Since the holder of the copyright
>> notice is the very same company that makes the source code available
>> to them, would it be possible to selectively waiver this obligation to
>> a particular set of users without infringing on the Open Source
>> definition or the BSD license itself?
>
> Yes and no.
>
> Since your employer owns the copyright to this software, they of
> course have the right to issue any licenses to it that they want. One
> such license could bd BSD+waiver, to a specific list of recipients. If
> these recipients are your customers, you would probably send them a
> letter with such text. Alternatively you could publish the waiver on
> your website, etc. Doing this would not be unheard of.
>
> However, since you intend to receive outside contributions, this
> becomes trickier. You cannot issue a waiver on behalf of the other
> developers who will own copyrights to the code they have contributed.

And that's exactly the company's fear. As another reply in this thread
mentioned, waivers are complicated and we'd be thrilled not to have to
issue any or even think about them. But the reality is that, although
we do want the project to become open source we need to care about
customers who might not want to mention that they use "our" open
source software.

>
>> If the answer was negative, would including the existence of such a
>> waiver in the license itself preclude it from being considered an open
>> source software license?
>
> Well, it would no longer be the BSD license and hence it would not be
> an OSI approved open source license.
>
> A license with such a waiver may still be open source in the sence
> that it would conform to the Open Source Definition. However, if you
> wanted general approval for it, you would have to submit it to OSI
> review as a new license. I think it's a fair estimate that you might
> not succeed in having such a modified license approved though.

I  feared so. And that's why ideally we'd use an already approved OSI
license, but one that doesn't force binary distributions to reproduce
the license. Perhaps a zlib license would be better for us?

>> 2) When accepting contributions to the source code repository from
>> external sources, I have seen that is sometimes customary to include
>> an additional copyright line to the license text included at the top
>> of the source file, crediting the person or company that contributed
>> the new code or file.
>> Would then the waiver mentioned in question 1) be in violation of the
>> additional copyright holder(s)' rights?
>
> Yes, as I explained above.
>
> There are some practices in the open source community that could still
> help you get around this. For example sometimes a central copyright
> holder may require other contributors to assign their rights to the
> central entity. (This can be either a for-profit or non-profit
> corporation.) In this case the problem goes away, since your employer
> would continue to own rights to 100% of the code. Note however that
> such contributor agreements / IPR assignments are somewhat unpopular
> in the community. The main reasons behind that are that a) they add
> bureacratic overhead to the act of contributing, and b) they add
> inequality to the contributor community, for example the central
> entity may use its right to include the contributed code in closed
> source products. In your case, since the code is BSD licensed anyway,
> the b) concern may not be so important.

From what I gather it should be then possible to keep the copyright
entirely the company's but then "acknowledge" the rest of contributors
in a file or on the website. Perhaps that would actually be a
possibility for us given that we expect most contributors to submit
changes for their own benefit and not for ours.

> You could also simply say that contributors must accept the waiver,
> otherwise you won't receive their contribution. For added legal
> safety, you should probably require some kind of signed acceptance of
> this. Thus the bureucratic overhead is equivalent to a contributor
> agreement anyway.

Well if we forbade to add copyright notices in the source files
themselves and instead only allowed contributors to add themselves in
an "AU

Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Gervase Markham]

On 01/10/15 14:27, Zluty Sysel wrote:
> distributed) product. Given this, let me rephrase: Can we allow these
> customers not to reproduce the BSD license text even if our AUTHORS
> file contains names and email addresses of people outside of our
> company? Because that's really all we're after here, allowing certain
> customers not to have to mention that they are using our libraries.

No. If you accept code into your codebase under the BSD licence, then
users of that code have to comply with the license, because you are no
longer able to offer a waiver for the code to which you do not own the
copyright. You have three possible options:

* Pick a project license which does not require attribution (that
basically means a Public Domain dedication); or

* Require copyright assignment or a very broad copyright license to all
contributions, so that you can continue to offer the waiver; or

* Require contributors to give a limited waiver solely for the
attribution clause.

Gerv
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[David Woolley]

On 02/10/15 10:22, Gervase Markham wrote:

* Pick a project license which does not require attribution (that
basically means a Public Domain dedication); or



Public domain dedication is impossible in Europe.  There is some doubt 
as whether it is even possible in the USA.  The nearest you would get is 
something like CC0, which attempts to disclaim as much IPR as it is 
possible to disclaim.

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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Gervase Markham]

On 02/10/15 11:05, David Woolley wrote:
> Public domain dedication is impossible in Europe.  There is some doubt
> as whether it is even possible in the USA.  The nearest you would get is
> something like CC0, which attempts to disclaim as much IPR as it is
> possible to disclaim.

That is indeed what I meant.

Gerv
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Simon Phipps]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 2:27 PM, Zluty Sysel  wrote:

> The problem comes with acknowledging the usage of this codebase in
> binary distributions. Some of the future users of this source code are
> also our current customers, and some of these customers do not want to
> reveal that they are using our particular libraries for their (binary
> distributed) product. Given this, let me rephrase: Can we allow these
> customers not to reproduce the BSD license text even if our AUTHORS
> file contains names and email addresses of people outside of our
> company? Because that's really all we're after here, allowing certain
> customers not to have to mention that they are using our libraries.
>

I would not recommend changing the license itself as that would require OSI
approval as a new license, but if that is the only issue, and reproducing
the copyright notices of later contributors who do not also make a waiver
is not really the obstacle, perhaps you could add an additional notice
along the lines of
"As a special additional right, <$company> grants all licensees of its
copyright under the above license the right to distribute binary versions
without reproducing their copyright notices per clause 2. We also encourage
(but do not require) later contributors to make the same waiver."

IANAL, TINLA etc.

S.
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Zluty Sysel]

Thanks for the reply.

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Gervase Markham  wrote:
> On 01/10/15 14:27, Zluty Sysel wrote:
>> distributed) product. Given this, let me rephrase: Can we allow these
>> customers not to reproduce the BSD license text even if our AUTHORS
>> file contains names and email addresses of people outside of our
>> company? Because that's really all we're after here, allowing certain
>> customers not to have to mention that they are using our libraries.
>
> No. If you accept code into your codebase under the BSD licence, then
> users of that code have to comply with the license, because you are no
> longer able to offer a waiver for the code to which you do not own the
> copyright. You have three possible options:

What if we accepted contributions from individuals but only
"acknowledged" their work in a special "THANKS" or "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT"
file without modifying at all the "(c) TheCompany" in the license
itself and therefore not granting any ownership rights to the
contributors? Assuming contributors weren't discouraged by that, would
that be compatible with the BSD license?

We might be trying to remove the open source essence from the license
here, but since I'm not an expert and I really want this to become a
reality, I am ready to grasp at straws to push it forward.

> * Pick a project license which does not require attribution (that
> basically means a Public Domain dedication); or

If I'm not mistaken the zlib license would fit our requirements since
it does not require attribution, it only encourages it. I might be
wrong though.
Would the zlib license not be usable in the EU?

> * Require copyright assignment or a very broad copyright license to all
> contributions, so that you can continue to offer the waiver; or

If we did that we wouldn't need the waiver anymore I believe, from a
previous response in this thread. Because then we'd be the sole
copyright owners and therefore the only ones authorized to enforce our
copyright, we could simply choose not to do so.

> * Require contributors to give a limited waiver solely for the
> attribution clause.

Maybe i have misunderstood the previous option. What would be the
difference between this option and the previous one? Is it that in the
last one the contributor still owns the rights to his/her code but
waivers the right to be present in notices for binary distributions?
And the previous one makes him or her give the ownership rights
completely?

In any case would the last 2 options be compatible with BSD and open
source in general? Because that could work for us.

Thanks!

Zluty
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Gervase Markham]

On 02/10/15 14:26, Zluty Sysel wrote:
> What if we accepted contributions from individuals but only
> "acknowledged" their work in a special "THANKS" or "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT"
> file without modifying at all the "(c) TheCompany" in the license
> itself and therefore not granting any ownership rights to the
> contributors?

Copyright doesn't work like that. The copyright automatically belongs to
the author, and you need a license or transfer or other legal agreement
to change that situation. You can't take their copyright simply by
virtual of not crediting them or by not labelling the software with
their copyright.

> If I'm not mistaken the zlib license would fit our requirements since
> it does not require attribution, it only encourages it. I might be
> wrong though.
> Would the zlib license not be usable in the EU?

zlib is widely used in the EU. So yes, this license would also be suitable.

> If we did that we wouldn't need the waiver anymore I believe, from a
> previous response in this thread. Because then we'd be the sole
> copyright owners and therefore the only ones authorized to enforce our
> copyright, we could simply choose not to do so.

Yes.

>> * Require contributors to give a limited waiver solely for the
>> attribution clause.
> 
> Maybe i have misunderstood the previous option. What would be the
> difference between this option and the previous one? 

Merely the more limited scope of the waiver.

> Is it that in the
> last one the contributor still owns the rights to his/her code but
> waivers the right to be present in notices for binary distributions?
> And the previous one makes him or her give the ownership rights
> completely?

Yes.

> In any case would the last 2 options be compatible with BSD and open
> source in general? Because that could work for us.

They would be legally compatible; however, requiring copyright
assignment will reduce the pool of people willing to contribute to your
project, either because they object to giving you the exclusive right to
make money by proprietarizing their hard work, or because of the
additional hassle of doing the paperwork.

Gerv
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Zluty Sysel]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 3:45 PM, Gervase Markham  wrote:
> On 02/10/15 14:26, Zluty Sysel wrote:
>> What if we accepted contributions from individuals but only
>> "acknowledged" their work in a special "THANKS" or "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT"
>> file without modifying at all the "(c) TheCompany" in the license
>> itself and therefore not granting any ownership rights to the
>> contributors?
>
> Copyright doesn't work like that. The copyright automatically belongs to
> the author, and you need a license or transfer or other legal agreement
> to change that situation. You can't take their copyright simply by
> virtual of not crediting them or by not labelling the software with
> their copyright.
>
>> If I'm not mistaken the zlib license would fit our requirements since
>> it does not require attribution, it only encourages it. I might be
>> wrong though.
>> Would the zlib license not be usable in the EU?
>
> zlib is widely used in the EU. So yes, this license would also be suitable.

Good to know, thanks for the information.

>> If we did that we wouldn't need the waiver anymore I believe, from a
>> previous response in this thread. Because then we'd be the sole
>> copyright owners and therefore the only ones authorized to enforce our
>> copyright, we could simply choose not to do so.
>
> Yes.

So just to be sure, if the contributors waiver their ownership rights,
then the 3-clause BSD stands and if users do not acknowledge usage of
the software in their binary distributions it is up to the company to
choose whether to enforce or not that obligation, leaving us the
option of not enforcing it with certain customers.

>>> * Require contributors to give a limited waiver solely for the
>>> attribution clause.
>>
>> Maybe i have misunderstood the previous option. What would be the
>> difference between this option and the previous one?
>
> Merely the more limited scope of the waiver.

I see, a bit of confusion arose here with the word "waiver" because
there are 2 potential ones: the one that contributors would have to
agree to to contribute, and the one that exempts certain users from
revealing the fact that they are using our libraries. You were I think
referring to the former.

>> Is it that in the
>> last one the contributor still owns the rights to his/her code but
>> waivers the right to be present in notices for binary distributions?
>> And the previous one makes him or her give the ownership rights
>> completely?
>
> Yes.
>
>> In any case would the last 2 options be compatible with BSD and open
>> source in general? Because that could work for us.
>
> They would be legally compatible; however, requiring copyright
> assignment will reduce the pool of people willing to contribute to your
> project, either because they object to giving you the exclusive right to
> make money by proprietarizing their hard work, or because of the
> additional hassle of doing the paperwork.

Do we really need additional paperwork? wouldn't it be enough to have
a license agreement that each contributor has to accept
(electronically, just by pressing "Accept" or something to that
effect).
In our particular case, and given the nature of our software, we
believe a waiver to the to the attribution clause in binary
distributions would be more than acceptable for our potential
contributors, so this could be the solution we're after.

Thanks again.

Zluty
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Gervase Markham]

On 02/10/15 15:36, Zluty Sysel wrote:
> So just to be sure, if the contributors waiver their ownership rights,
> then the 3-clause BSD stands and if users do not acknowledge usage of
> the software in their binary distributions it is up to the company to
> choose whether to enforce or not that obligation, leaving us the
> option of not enforcing it with certain customers.

You can't waive ownership rights; you have to assign or license them.
But yes.

> Do we really need additional paperwork? wouldn't it be enough to have
> a license agreement that each contributor has to accept
> (electronically, just by pressing "Accept" or something to that
> effect).
> In our particular case, and given the nature of our software, we
> believe a waiver to the to the attribution clause in binary
> distributions would be more than acceptable for our potential
> contributors, so this could be the solution we're after.

If I were you, I'd save the trouble and use the zlib license instead.

Gerv
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Stephen Paul Weber]

Can we allow these
customers not to reproduce the BSD license text even if our AUTHORS
file contains names and email addresses of people outside of our
company? Because that's really all we're after here, allowing certain
customers not to have to mention that they are using our libraries.


If you want to be open source and do not want to require attribution, why 
not consider  or similar?


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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Zluty Sysel]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Stephen Paul Weber
 wrote:
>> Can we allow these
>> customers not to reproduce the BSD license text even if our AUTHORS
>> file contains names and email addresses of people outside of our
>> company? Because that's really all we're after here, allowing certain
>> customers not to have to mention that they are using our libraries.
>
>
> If you want to be open source and do not want to require attribution, why
> not consider  or similar?

Thanks for the suggestion.
All options will be considered but our original hope was to be able to
require attribution to everybody with some exceptions (i.e. certain
customers).

Zluty
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Stephen Paul Weber (singpol...@singpolyma.net):

> If you want to be open source and do not want to require
> attribution, why not consider  or similar?

Like most recent licences that aim to be more minimal than MIT/X11
License and Fair License (both OSI Certified, BTW), Unlicense suffers
fatal drafting errors, such that it should _not_ be recommended to
anyone.

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/26.html
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/47.html
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/49.html
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/52.html
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/60.html

OTOH, Creative Commons CC0 is highly permissive and legally airtight
because it includes well-drafted permissive licence that applies in any
jurisdiction where its primary PD dedication clauses fail to have the
intended legal effect.  (On the gripping hand, this causes its full text
to be lengthy.)

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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Zluty Sysel (zluty.sy...@gmail.com):

> What if we accepted contributions from individuals but only
> "acknowledged" their work in a special "THANKS" or "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT"
> file without modifying at all the "(c) TheCompany" in the license
> itself and therefore not granting any ownership rights to the
> contributors?

One important point:  Such a notice does not _grant_ ownership rights.

Those rights arise and legally vest with the contributor automatically,
silently, and invisibly at the moment he/she puts his/her work in fixed
form.  Failing to mention that ownership interest in a copyright notice, 
or a THANKS or ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS file, or elsewhere cannot make the
contributor's ownership right go away.  It simply cannot.[1]

All you accomplish by omitting mention of such ownership claims is to 
deliberately fail to advise downstream recipients of who the full set of
owners are.

If you want to eradicate the problem of contributors enjoying a
copyright encumbrance over the codebase, get copyright assignments.  In
USA legal jurisdictions, this must be evidenced in writing, signed.
Other juridications, check locally.

[1] Naturally, contributors and other copyright stakesholders _can_ waive
the requirement of notice.  I strongly second the suggestion of
implementing this idea in a waiver accompanying a standard licence,
rather than modifying an existing licence.

-- 
Cheers,  Arrq uryc qrpelcgvat EBG13?  Nfx zr ubj!
Rick Moen  
r...@linuxmafia.com
McQ! (4x80)
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[John Cowan]

Zluty Sysel scripsit:

> Well, since the code is distributed under a license that requires
> disclosure there was some fear internally that disclosure and license
> reproduction would be mandatory for all users of the source code.

It is a mistake to suppose that the BSD and similar licenses require
disclosure of the source code.  Rather, they presuppose it.  If you
are in possession of the source code, you get certain rights; if you
aren't in possession, you get no rights.

There is code in Windows that was licensed under the BSD license�, but
that fact does not mean that anyone outside Microsoft has the right
to receive that source code from Microsoft.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
Don't be so humble.  You're not that great.
--Golda Meir
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Re: [License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Kevin Fleming]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Zluty Sysel  wrote:

> Thanks for the suggestion.
> All options will be considered but our original hope was to be able to
> require attribution to everybody with some exceptions (i.e. certain
> customers).
>


This is not a 'waiver', it's a second license. Your statements indicate
that you want to be able to distribute the software under two licenses:
BSD, and a BSD-like license that does not require attribution (which might
be the 'zlib' license).

To achieve this, you'll need to obtain that level of licensing flexibility
from your contributors. As has been noted by others here, there are
multiple options available:

* Copyright assignment: heavy weight, difficult for corporate copyright
holders, seen as a significant barrier to contribution

* Contributor license agreement providing broad licensing privileges:
somewhat common, but seen as a barrier to contribution because the
contributors are granting you the ability to license their contributions
under any license you wish

* Contributor license agreement providing specific licensing privileges:
more likely to be perceived as 'fair', if the contributors only grant
permission to distribute their contributions under the two specific
licenses mentioned

In the end, though, it's probably much easier to just use the zlib license.
There may be some people who will choose not to contribute due to the lack
of attribution obligations, but those same people would likely not
contribute if a copyright assignment or contributor license were required.
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