[License-discuss] BSD 3-clause and copyright notices

[Kevin Fleming]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Zluty Sysel <zluty.sysel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the suggestion.
> All options will be considered but our original hope was to be able to
> require attribution to everybody with some exceptions (i.e. certain
> customers).
>


This is not a 'waiver', it's a second license. Your statements indicate
that you want to be able to distribute the software under two licenses:
BSD, and a BSD-like license that does not require attribution (which might
be the 'zlib' license).

To achieve this, you'll need to obtain that level of licensing flexibility
from your contributors. As has been noted by others here, there are
multiple options available:

* Copyright assignment: heavy weight, difficult for corporate copyright
holders, seen as a significant barrier to contribution

* Contributor license agreement providing broad licensing privileges:
somewhat common, but seen as a barrier to contribution because the
contributors are granting you the ability to license their contributions
under any license you wish

* Contributor license agreement providing specific licensing privileges:
more likely to be perceived as 'fair', if the contributors only grant
permission to distribute their contributions under the two specific
licenses mentioned

In the end, though, it's probably much easier to just use the zlib license.
There may be some people who will choose not to contribute due to the lack
of attribution obligations, but those same people would likely not
contribute if a copyright assignment or contributor license were required.
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