[License-discuss] Better Attribution License (Formerly Berkeley-Artistic License)

[Josh Berkus]

On 3/22/25 23:15, Lucy Ada Randall via License-discuss wrote:
> Standard Version: The project which is the basis for modified versions, 
> also known as upstream.
> Modified Versions: versions of the source code distributed by the 
> project that have been modified, which can be distributed as 
> executables, downstream.

I'm aware that this language has been used in other licenses.  It is not 
an OSD violation in my opinion. However, since this is a new license 
it's worth discussing doing better.

One thing which has always been awkward about this language in those 
licenses is: what happens when someone only wants to use *part* of your 
code?  For example, a single file, and not any of the rest of the 
project?  What's the Standard Version in that case, and what happens 
when later projects fork and re-re-share that one file?  What if the 
file was actually borrowed under the MIT license from another project, 
with the BAL wrapped on top?

Pam discussed this at greater length in one of her comments.  While 
you've revised the license to remove a lot of the other issues with it, 
it still does have this fundamental assumption that it's applied to 
software with a single origin point which will never change, and that 
the software will be forked *as a whole* rather than being pieced up.

The goal here is to make sure that there's credit given to the "original 
creator" of the code, correct?

-- 
Josh Berkus