[License-discuss] a GPLv3 compatible attribution for MIT/BSD?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Clark C. Evans (cce at clarkevans.com):

> As an update to this thread, I've revived my interest in 
> trying to keep GPLv3 compatibility with this approach;
> a reasonable, attribution terms for a MIT derived license
> or the GPLv3 itself (under 7b).
> 
> However, I've expanded the scope of this beyond simply 
> crafting a license that requires attribution.  For this
> sort of project to work, it requires community engagement
> from the ground up -- even for works that don't have this
> sort of requirement.  Hence, I've started an open source
> project for effective attribution for OSS projects.  If 
> you are interested, I'd love to have collaborators.
> 
>   http://tip-o-the-hat.org

Clark was kind enough to send me offlist mail asking if I 
were willing to 'engage' with his initiative.  So:


Hmm, I personally consider most licence requirements for 'visual display
of OSS attributions' to be at minimum a bit obnoxious, if you're
referring to things even approximately like CPAL 1.0 (Common Public
Attribution License), its various badgeware predecessors -- as I believe
you are.

SugarCRM's subsequent torturing of GPLv3 into a particularly bad
badgeware licence through stitching their earlier badgeware requirement
into GPLv3 via a hook in GPLv7 section 3 -- covering SugarCRM Community
Edition 5.0 -- was IMO outright deceptive, particularly the way they
ballyhooed that move in public pronouncements, implying they were using
stock GPLv3 when that was not the case, e.g.,
http://www.sugarforge.org/content/faq/gplv3.php.  However, even
SugarCRM, Inc. could see that that was going to eventually boomerang on
them, so they wisely moved to Affero GPLv3 starting with Sugar Community
Edition 6.

I'm generally doubtful about new licences without a really compelling
reason, and the whole sordid badgeware episode from 2006-7 tends to make
me particularly skeptical of novel licences talking about 'reasonable
attribution terms'.

Badgeware was a bad idea pushed by a gang of hucksters trying to con the
public and tout each others' stocks in their cruddy little ZDnet columns.
(I could name names.)  Let it die.

(I might be missing something, being in the middle of other things --
and am commenting off the cuff -- but you did ask.)