Simplified BSD license

Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu
Tue Jun 5 07:49:15 UTC 2007


Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> 3) The license is derived from the (revised) BSD license, with the
>    no-endorsement clause removed, leaving only the attribution-in-source
>    and attribution-with-binary clauses.

Can't you just use the MIT license
(http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)?  That doesn't have the
endorsements clause.  I really don't see a /need/ for this license.

> 4) The advantage of this license over the full BSD license is that it is
>    unambiguously compatible with the GPL, as the no-endorsement clause
>    could be regarded as a "further restriction on the recipients'
>    exercise of rights" preventing BSD-licensed software from being
>    combined with GPL software.

Maybe... but the FSF doesn't think so
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses).  They
find the New BSD fully compatible with the GPL.  And claiming a real
endorsement where there clearly wasn't one would probably be some kind
of fraud.  So it's not a real issue.

Matt Flaschen



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