RFD: BSD/MIT-like licence with European clause
Thorsten Glaser
x86 at ePost.de
Wed May 12 16:28:29 UTC 2004
Hello fellows from license-discuss@,
I'd like to get a little bit of feedback on a licence template
posted below. I don't ask for certification because I already
know well (check the list archives) that you are not going to
approve Just Another Boring OpenSource Licence, but if you'd
like to provide me with some helpful information, please go on.
The intent of the licence is the classical "giveaway" or
"copycentre" ideology of the BSD licence type - I write something
for myself and just publish it; I don't want to be made liable
for it, but then, I don't want others to say they've written it
(so I can re-use the pieces commercially later, if I want to).
In addition to that, in most European countries, there's not only
the Copyright law, but this droit d'auteur thing. Also, rumours
have it (seen at Heise Newsticker "Bremer Lizenz", for the Germans
among the readership) that, if you disclaim everything, you end
up being in "default liability by law", which is a lot more than
the bare minimum; Till Jaeger from ifrOSS spoke that one cannot
disclaim liability for malware (eg, viruses or trojans put into
the code) or work which is others' intellectual property.
(As far as I am informed, you're liable for these two if you put
it in voluntarily, and - if you didn't know about it - if you
remove it as soon as you get aware of it, you won't usually be
held liable. Please correct me if I'm wrong; IANAL.)
The licence template below tries to summarize it in two sentences ;-)
I still don't exactly like the wording of the "malice intent"
subphrase, nor its positioning in the paragraph. If you have
a better idea (which fits into the justification of the para-
graphs), please tell me.
Please note I am not subscribed to this list since quite some
time, so it's highly appreciated if you Cc: either myself or,
better, the MirOS discussion mailing list, on replies.
Thanks in advance!
bye,
//Thorsten
Exhibit A: just another licence template
/* $Id$
*-
* Copyright (c) year, year, year, ...
* First M. Last <user at host.domain>
*
* Licensee is hereby permitted to deal in this work without restric-
* tion, including unlimited rights to use, publically perform, modi-
* fy, merge, distribute, sell, give away or sublicence, provided the
* above copyright notices, these terms and the disclaimer are retai-
* ned in all redistributions, or reproduced in accompanying documen-
* tation or other materials provided with binary redistributions.
*
* Licensor hereby provides this work "as is" and without any warran-
* ties whatsoever, express or implied, to the maximum extent permit-
* ted by applicable law, except that the work is not written or pub-
* lished with malice intent; in no event may authors or contributors
* be held liable for any damage, however caused, direct or indirect,
* arising in any way out of the usage of covered work, even if advi-
* sed of the possibility of such damage.
*/
PS: I wouldn't be angry if, despite I chose to not ask for it, the
OSI approved this variant after the end of the discussions ;-)
PPS: miros-discuss@ subscribers, you're still invited to discuss as well.
--
Solange man keine schmutzigen Tricks macht, und ich meine *wirklich*
schmutzige Tricks, wie bei einer doppelt verketteten Liste beide
Pointer XORen und in nur einem Word speichern, funktioniert Boehm ganz
hervorragend. -- Andreas Bogk über boehm-gc in d.a.s.r
More information about the License-discuss
mailing list