Clarification on Using Licenses

Eugene Wee eugenew at starhub.net.sg
Thu Apr 1 17:47:38 UTC 2004


Hi,

The list of OSI approved licenses include licenses that have names of 
companies embedded in them, so to speak.
If alterations are made so that these names are changed to fit the new 
software that is licensed under such a license, would the new software 
be OSI certified?

For example, I wish to use the IBM Public license version 1.0, and I 
change every instance of "International Business Machines Corporation" 
or "IBM" to "Example Corporation".

Also, what about superficial changes to the license itself, on the same 
lines as of the above mentioned alterations?
Do these affect the open source status of the software?

For example, using the BSD license template I find that "name of the 
<ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its contributors" is more suitably 
replaced by "names of the copyright holders nor the names of the 
contributors", in the 3rd condition.
Furthermore, what if I replace "COPYRIGHT OWNER" with "COPYRIGHT 
HOLDERS" in the disclaimer, considering that the former is also used?

Thanks,
Eugene Wee

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