On 11/07/2013 12:35 PM, Gervase Markham wrote:
I want to have another go at gaining consensus on making tweaks to the
OSI's presentation of the 3-clause BSD licence
<http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause> to reduce license
proliferation in the long term.
Thank you! I also hope this will reduce time consumed unnecessarily for
projects.
Proposal: replace "<ORGANIZATION>" with "copyright holder" on the OSI's
3-Clause page, and update the surrounding text to explain the situation.
That update would be in a similar vein to the existing explanatory sentence:
"In the original BSD license, both occurrences of the phrase
"COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS" in the disclaimer read "REGENTS
AND CONTRIBUTORS".
I would argue that the above sentence also establishes a precedent that
it's OK for the OSI copy of a historical license to be genericized in
this non-parameterized way.
I think the page would look in practice like the following text. Written
quickly to visualize the proposal, in case it helps.
<OWNER> = Regents of University of California
<YEAR> = 1998
In the original BSD license, the occurrence of "copyright holder" in the
3rd clause read "ORGANIZATION", placeholder for "University of
California". Both occurrences of the phrase "COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND
CONTRIBUTORS" in the disclaimer read "REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS".
Here is the license template:
Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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.
3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS
IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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