RE: [tlug] Vendor lock-in vs monopoly

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, burlingk@example.com wrote:

> I am contemplating some ideas for projects, but at this time am
> seriously considering the BSD License. (Basically Statement 1 with the
> stipulation that you give credit).

You might want to be a little bit careful about credit clauses. We ended
up going with the MIT license when we recently open-sourced a chunk of
our QAM framework[1] mainly becuase we wanted to avoid credit clauses.

The main issue, as many of us are still struggling with, is the
advertising clause:

    * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
    *    must display the following acknowledgement:
    *      This product includes software developed by the University of
    *      California, Berkeley and its contributors.

Other folks copy this for new code, but change the acknowledgement. This
means that on a larger project, with contributions from all over, you
might have to (in theory, anyway) add dozens of these acknowledgements
to every web banner advertising the product. (A more detailed explanation
of this can be found at [2].)

As NetBSD developers have learned, once this starts, it can be very
hard to get rid of. After some thought and campaigning, the CSRG folks
eventually re-licensed all the 4BSD code without this clause[3], but
unfortunately, NetBSD has a lot of other code, copyright by other
people, that has the clause, and of course that revocation doesn't (and
can't) affect any of those licenses. Our only option is to chase down
every contributor (or his estate, if he's, say, dead).

[1] http://www.starling-software.com/en/qam.html
    More on this later--maybe I'll give another presentation if enough
    folks who go to TLUG meetings find it interesting.

[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

[3] ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com