For Approval: The Simplified BSD License

[David Woolley]

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:

I don't like the word "Simplified". It has connotations of dumbing down. 
  I think BSD Licence without Endorsements Clause would be much clearer.

> All rights reserved.

Maybe I don't understand this phrase (IANAL), but it seems to me that 
the whole point of the BSD style licence is to un-reserve many rights! 
Creative Commons use of the phrase "some rights reserved" seems to be 
consistent with my interpretation.  On my interpretation, this makes the 
result self contradictory and therefore potentially void.

> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS needs defining.  In my view, the warranty disclaimer should 
only be imposed in relation to those persons that are listed in the 
associated list of copyright owners.  With BSD style licencing, it 
should be possible for someone to contribute to create a proprietary 
fork and give some warranties (even though most software vendors would 
rather not give warranties).
-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.