advertising clause / PKCS#11 header files

Andreas Jellinghaus aj at dungeon.inka.de
Mon Oct 3 08:43:07 UTC 2005


Hi,

opensource.org lists only the bsd license without advertising
clause, so I wonder what you think of files with it. 

I'm one of the opensc developers, we create open source software
under LGPL license. but to implement the pkcs#11 API we are using
the official header files with this license:

http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2133
DISCLAIMER
Regarding the header / include files:

License to copy and use this software is granted provided that it is 
identified as "RSA Security Inc. PKCS #11 Cryptographic Token Interface 
(Cryptoki)" in all material mentioning or referencing this software or this 
function. 

License is also granted to make and use derivative works provided that such 
works are identified as "derived from the RSA Security Inc. PKCS #11 
Cryptographic Token Interface (Cryptoki)" in all material mentioning or 
referencing the derived work. 

This software is provided “AS IS” and RSA Security, Inc. disclaims all 
warranties including but not limited to the implied warranty of 
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and noninfringement.


looks pretty bsd4 like to me.

we also found an alternative source for those header files:
mozilla includes those under lgpl/mpl/gpl license, but they also have
an extra clause:
 * Copyright (C) 1994-1999 RSA Security Inc. Licence to copy this document
 * is granted provided that it is identified as "RSA Security In.c Public-Key
 * Cryptography Standards (PKCS)" in all material mentioning or referencing
 * this document.

so I wonder:
 * are these clauses compareable to the bsd advertising clause?
 * what is your point of view on it? will switching to the later ones
   be any good (those header files are older, miss some recent
   additions etc.).
 * might those clauses even be incompatible with other licenses?
 * in total: do you see a problem? should we contact rsalabs and ask if they
   could drop that clause?

Thanks for your help.

Regards, Andreas



More information about the License-discuss mailing list