|
|
|||
BSD/ISC license
Information about the ISC license used by the OpenBSD project as posted on the misc mailing list.
You can read the complete discussion at http://readlist.com/lists/openbsd.or.../15/79290.html Code:
Subject: Re: BSD Documentation License? Group: Openbsd-misc From: Theo de Raadt Date: 22 Mar 2008 > Too late. ;) > > It looks like the old ISC code or almost the original BSD license, which > I cannot find. I'm getting worse at searching, but it seems things are > disappearing, too. Note even just using the word "license" creates confusion, since license implies contract law. Outside the US, the rest of the world does not use contract law for copyright. In the entire world, copyright grants you all rights to something until you surrender some rights, with a piece of text, but that text only loosely called a license. In OpenBSD we use an ISC-style copyright text since it does what is needed. It is simply a statement of right granting... 1) Declaration of copyright by the author 2) A decleration that the author retains the right to be known as the author, but surrenders all other rights granted by the law. (In copyright law if the author does not surrended a right, he retains it; in this way we revoke all rights except the one we care about). 3) Because of the existance of both declerations together, it therefore means that the text cannot be removed from the files. If someone removes the first (1) line, then there is nothing to say that the rights grant (2) is under copyright law since anyone could have written it; alternatively if that someone deletes the rights grant (2), then there is no indication that any rights are granted -- thus, by copyright law, they were not granted. So anyone who changes/removes the text is reducing their rights to the files. That is enough to satisfy every legal system on the planet which follows the Berne Convention. Some legal systems require even less than what the ISC license does, since they base their national copyright laws more strictly on the original intent behind the Berne convention -- ie. the European concept of the moral rights of the author, ie. the original idea behind the treaty. (The 2/3-term BSD license meant to do basically the same, but it used more words to do the same. The old 4-term BSD license included some terms to make University of California benefit from advertising, if there was going to be any.) Watch out for the new ISC license, because the FSF lawyers have convinced the ISC to do something totally stupid. It now uses a phrase "and/or" to mean "or", but some country's legal systems might not understand "and/or" in the way the old "or" was used in the sentence. I disagree with what ISC did; I am not confident that their change is good. > The attribution requirement seems to suggest that the Creative Commons > Attribution license is a close match: > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ > > For the sake of conformity I would something with a URL hosted by a > well-known project. Please avoid using that creativecommons bullshit for anything -- it it tries to hide the fundamentals and simplicity of basic copyright law behind the massive complexity of US-centric contract law and the various terminology normally tied to tit for tat. In the end, creativecommons licenses will only ever truly benefit one group of people on this planet: The lawyers. Copyright does not need contract law to keep things free. What those creativecommons people are feeding people is a fraud. I (and many many others) give software away so that the whole world world can benefit, but if there was one group who should benefit last it is the bottom feeding assholes who make giving away harder than it needs to be. And that is exactly what creativecommons tries to do. 2300 words to say "you must say I wrote it"? There is only one reason it could take 2300 words: The goal is to deceive. From /usr/share/misc/license.template on my OpenBSD system: Code:
Below is an example license to be used for new code in OpenBSD, modeled after the ISC license. It is important to specify the year of the copyright. Additional years should be separated by a comma, e.g. Copyright (c) 2003, 2004 If you add extra text to the body of the license, be careful not to add further restrictions. /* * Copyright (c) CCYY YOUR NAME HERE <user@your.dom.ain> * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. * * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES * WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF * MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR * ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES * WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN * ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF * OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. */
__________________
You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump |
Tags |
bsd license, isc license |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Requesting a refund of an unused not wanted MS Windows license | guitarscn | Off-Topic | 11 | 29th January 2010 12:18 AM |
Unix noob's license plate | drhowarddrfine | Off-Topic | 16 | 20th September 2008 04:57 PM |