advertising clauses

[David Starner]

On Fri, Sep 03, 1999 at 10:35:55AM -0700, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> Stig likes to point out in his license presentations that the advertising
> clause is what led to Berkeley prevailing over AT&T in the lawsuit a few
> years back - AT&T was using BSD code without notifying its customers of
> that fact.  He claims without it, we might not have any BSD code in the
> free software space.  If this is incorrect, let Stig know before it ends
> up in a book somewhere.  =)

An optimist might say that legally, Berkeley had the right to distribute
(at least most of) the files it was distributing under the BSD license under
any license it cared to. So if it had gone to court, then Berkeley would have
ended up about where they did in reality. (Or should have. A realist might
say that you've got better odds in Vegas then in the court room, because
in Vegas, at least someone wins.)

And, IIRC, wasn't Unisys that had the license at the time and was sueing? Or 
someone else?

David Starner - dstarner98 at aasaa.ofe.org