Advertising Clauses in Licenses

[Bruce Perens]

Are you assuming that they will not admit new ones?

After my conversation with Larry today, and getting a better idea of the
way he wants the license approval process to work, I'm going to change my
stance. I think there needs to be language added to the OSD, protecting
the user and developer from odd burdens that the licensor wishes to impose
upon them. These burdens are mostly not directly connected with software
development. For example: usage-reporting, or taking attribution to a
greater level than simply putting developer's names with the software
license on a disk where the end-user or creator of a derived work can
read them. Such language needs to be general enough to admit whatever new
burdens people decide to invent. You should not be asked to bind the
developer's name as a sign on thy hand and as frontlets between thy eyes.

	Thanks

	Bruce

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 10:39:42PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote:
>       So where
>     in the OSD, or in the GPL, do we make it clear that potentially
>     burdensome license requirements (however those are defined) are not
>     allowed?
> 
> I recommend you allow them but deprecate them.  That is what we do.
> We always did recognize the old BSD license as a free software
> license, but we said people should avoid it because of its annoying
> practical consequences.
> 
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