Yet another license question
Kevin Kofler
kevin.kofler at chello.at
Tue Oct 3 05:13:21 UTC 2006
Tom 'spot' Callaway <tcallawa at ...> writes:
> This is BSD with advertising (GPL-incompatible, but free). OK for
> Fedora.
No, this is NOT the standard BSD advertising clause. The advertising clause
covers DISTRIBUTION of software. This one covers USE. While I understand that
the intent of this clause is just to enforce standard academic courtesy, I
believe this is not anywhere near Free Software or Open Source. Restrictions on
use are simply unacceptable under those guidelines. So I'd say this is NOT OK
according to the licensing guidelines (which say the license should be Free
Software and/or Open Source according to the FSF and/or OSI). Accidental
violations by users not aware of that clause are also something to be concerned
about. (As a user, I really do not expect to find this kind of licensing
requirements in software I get from Fedora, and I don't think I'm the only one
caught by surprise.)
Kevin Kofler
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