Scope of copyright on derivative works

[Chris Travers]

On 9/28/07, Smith, McCoy <mccoy.smith at intel.com> wrote:
>
>  BSD license text is on the OSI website.
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php
>
> Perhaps you can point out where in that text is the "requirement that the
> permission grant" be included.
>

Ok, pretending that OSI, and not UC Berkeley defines the BSD License...

Let us look at the OSI reference version line by line.
>> All rights reserved.

Ok.  So whatever is not permitted here is restricted.

>> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Despite the fact that all rights are reserved, permission is granted by the
author to distribute the software in source and binary forms to his/her
copyrighted elements under conditions offered by this license.  Note that
this only provides the right to distribute verbatem copies of the code and
the right to prepare derivative works.  It doesn not mention sublicensing,
nor is sublicensing required to exercise the right to distribute modified or
unmodified versions of the software.



   - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.


This requires that a copy of the license accompany the source code
distribution as it applies to the above copyright notice.  It does *not*
reach beyond those elements covered in the above copyright notice, however.

The other clauses relate to binary only distributions (where the copyright,
license, and disclaimer must be moved into the documentation, and the
disclaimer of warranty.  In essence the license text I believe constitutes
an instrument authorizing use of the software in certain circumstances.
Since sublicensing is not listed, but the license must be included, I would
conclude that the license addresses all third parties, but does not provide
a sublicensing right.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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