[License-discuss] Life cycle of a license with and without binary attribution clause

[Zluty Sysel]

Hi there,

I was wondering the following regarding attribution clauses in licenses like the BSD 3-clause and derivatives. 

a) If Company Foo manufactures a product (think Integrated Circuit) that contains portions of software (say firmware in ROM) in binary form covered by the BSD license and then sells the product to a Company Bar that takes the chip and places it on a PCB inside an end-product that it then sells to the general public, is Company Bar required to reproduce the text of the license? In other words, is that still considered a redistribution of the original software in binary form, or is only Company Foo required to do that?

b) If one was to take the BSD 3-clause license and remove its second clause:

"2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.”

what would happen then with binary redistributions of software covered by this modified BSD? Would they not be covered by any license at all? Would the binary executable or ROM be exempt from any type of restriction completely?

Thanks in advance.

Zluty