Comment 1 for bug 365908
Revision history for this message
| Karl Fogel (kfogel) wrote Re: "Revised" BSD License is old diminutive, use with "3-clause" | #1 |
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0e1f616
(Get the code!)
I suggest we allow both the 3-clause and the 2-clause BSD licenses, and that we call them by the same name: "BSD license (without advertising clause)".
That is, we do not need to distinguish between 2-clause and 3-clause, since they are functionally the same. The important thing is that neither of them contains the infamous advertising clause (which was part of the original 4-clause BSD license). So let's use the phrase "(without advertising clause)" to indicate that.
Background:
The "advertising clause" that was dropped from the original BSD license in 1999 said:
"All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
software must display the following acknowledgement: This product
includes software developed by <ORGANIZATION> and its contributors."
Both the 3-clause and the 2-clause are post-1999. The difference between them is the removal of *another* clause -- the endorsement prohibition:
"Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.
As that clause just reiterates a prohibition already enforced by trademark law, so some licensors deem it unnecessary in the copyright license and have dropped it. For our purposes, it doesn't matter whether the endorsement clause is present or not, so we don't really care whether someone is licensing under 3-clause or 2-clause. They're both BSD-style open-source licenses, and we can use one category to hold them.