Another extended BSD licence :-/
Hi, I have been asked to provide packages for a small piece of software that uses this licence: This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product or c64-release, an acknowledgment in the product documentation or credits would be appreciated. Or beer! 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. 4. If you alter this software and release it, you must also provide the source. You may not turn this into yet-another-windows-only-c64- software. The software's platform independance and portability must be maintained, no x86-only assembly code (unless there's also a plain C version of it), no Windows-only API shit. If you violate this, pestilence shall come upon you, and DeeKay shall come to your house and format your harddrive to install Linux. Your C64 will be confiscated and you will be forced to use a Sinclair Spectrum ZX81 to do all your coding - with its shitty membrane keyboard! The first three paragraphs look like a BSD licence to me, paragraph four is a personal rant from the authors. Apart from the obvious (remove everything following "no x86-only assembly code..."), what else would be needed to make this a valid licence suitable for inclusion into non-free? I can see: - it is not specified to whom you need to provide source - "You may not turn this..." would be implied in the next sentence - the bit about portability is pretty vague. I'm going to try to convince the authors to use the GPL, but given their aversion to OSS "politics" I'm not sure that will work. :/ Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100817113933.ga27...@richter
Re: Another extended BSD licence :-/
On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 01:39:33PM +0200, Simon Richter wrote: > The first three paragraphs look like a BSD licence to me, paragraph four > is a personal rant from the authors. Apart from the obvious (remove > everything following "no x86-only assembly code..."), what else would be > needed to make this a valid licence suitable for inclusion into > non-free? > > I can see: > > - it is not specified to whom you need to provide source > - "You may not turn this..." would be implied in the next sentence > - the bit about portability is pretty vague. > > I'm going to try to convince the authors to use the GPL, but given their > aversion to OSS "politics" I'm not sure that will work. :/ Try to convince them to use BSD, which would only imply removing their crappy addition to it. That rant has nothing to do in a license text. Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100817120910.gb4...@glandium.org
Re: Another extended BSD licence :-/
On 17.08.2010 13:39, Simon Richter wrote: Hi, I have been asked to provide packages for a small piece of software that uses this licence: This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product or c64-release, an acknowledgment in the product documentation or credits would be appreciated. Or beer! 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. 4. If you alter this software and release it, you must also provide the source. You may not turn this into yet-another-windows-only-c64- software. The software's platform independance and portability must be maintained, no x86-only assembly code (unless there's also a plain C version of it), no Windows-only API shit. If you violate this, pestilence shall come upon you, and DeeKay shall come to your house and format your harddrive to install Linux. Your C64 will be confiscated and you will be forced to use a Sinclair Spectrum ZX81 to do all your coding - with its shitty membrane keyboard! It is not a BSD like license: "you must also provide the source.", so nearly a copyleft with very few requirements. Anyway it is "non-free", because: "The software's platform independance and portability must be maintained, no x86-only assembly code (unless there's also a plain C version of it), no Windows-only API shit. " This limits what/how you can modify it, which is again DFSG. What does it mean in Debian? We should write patches so that we must support Windows and MacOS X? (Or maybe on mainframe and also strange systems with maybe strange libraries?) PS: I have a C64. With this license the author reclaims the ownership of my C64 if I do POSIX-only changes. ciao cate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c6a801e.5000...@debian.org
