Question re attribution for derived works...

[John Cowan]

Claire Giordano scripsit:

>    I'm wondering how feasible it would be to require people creating and
>    distributing derived works to advertise (if they advertise)
>    that their derived work was "based on the open source technology" in
>    question.

It's perfectly consistent with the Open Source Definition to require this.
However, community experience shows that it's a bad idea, for two reasons:

a) It makes the code incompatible with the GPL (which may or may not
   matter, especially if the license is GPL-incompatible for other reasons).

b) If the license becomes popular, it puts a great burden on the makers of
   distributions: they may have to include dozens or hundreds of such
   attribution lines with every advertisement, which is expensive.

For these reasons, the University of California unilaterally and
retroactively annulled this clause from the BSD license as used in their
works, and most people who have used the BSD license since then have
excluded it.

-- 
We call nothing profound                        jcowan at reutershealth.com
that is not wittily expressed.                  John Cowan
        --Northrop Frye (improved)              http://www.reutershealth.com
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