For Approval: BSD License (with express disclaimer of noninfringement

[David Woolley]

>       noninfringement.  For this reason, we have modified the BSD
>       license by adding the word, "NONINFRINGMENT" after the word,
>       "MERCHANTABILITY" in the first sentence of the final paragraph of
>       the license.

As infringement could include copyright infringement, I would say that
such a licence was effectively worthless.  It is basically saying that
the purported licensor may not actually have the right to licence the
software.

I think it is normally considered a minimum requirement that licensors
use due dilligence to ensure that the have the right to license.

If this is a patents issue, the language needs to be narrowed to exclude
copyrights.

If this is about copyrights, the copyright clearence process that was
used needs to be described in some detail, so that people receiving the
software can form their own opinion as to whether or not they have
a valid license, but I suspect that most businesses will reject the
licence even then.

I see a risk that this is being used as a way of creating a published source
licence, which is not effectively an open source one.

IANAL