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FreeBSD legacy license with restrictions on copyright notice placement
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Richard Fontana
Sep 16, 2022, 3:00:03 PM9/16/22
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Greetings debian-legal!
I understand Debian includes the package libbsd in Debian main. This
package includes a man page with the following license (see
https://git.hadrons.org/cgit/debian/pkgs/libbsd.git/tree/debian/copyright#n214)
License: BSD-5-clause-Peter-Wemm
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, is permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice immediately at the beginning of the file, without modification,
this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
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.
3. This work was done expressly for inclusion into FreeBSD. Other use
is permitted provided this notation is included.
4. Absolutely no warranty of function or purpose is made by the author
Peter Wemm.
5. Modifications may be freely made to this file providing the above
conditions are met.
I'm curious if there are opinions on why "must retain the above
copyright notice immediately at the beginning of the file" is
consistent with the DFSG. This is one of a variety of 1990s FreeBSD
3-clause BSD variants with such a feature.
Richard
I understand Debian includes the package libbsd in Debian main. This
package includes a man page with the following license (see
https://git.hadrons.org/cgit/debian/pkgs/libbsd.git/tree/debian/copyright#n214)
License: BSD-5-clause-Peter-Wemm
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, is permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice immediately at the beginning of the file, without modification,
this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
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.
3. This work was done expressly for inclusion into FreeBSD. Other use
is permitted provided this notation is included.
4. Absolutely no warranty of function or purpose is made by the author
Peter Wemm.
5. Modifications may be freely made to this file providing the above
conditions are met.
I'm curious if there are opinions on why "must retain the above
copyright notice immediately at the beginning of the file" is
consistent with the DFSG. This is one of a variety of 1990s FreeBSD
3-clause BSD variants with such a feature.
Richard
Sam Hartman
Sep 16, 2022, 4:10:02 PM9/16/22
to
>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Fontana <rfon...@redhat.com> writes:
Richard> I'm curious if there are opinions on why "must retain the
Richard> above copyright notice immediately at the beginning of the
Richard> file" is consistent with the DFSG. This is one of a variety
Richard> of 1990s FreeBSD 3-clause BSD variants with such a feature.
Well, under DFSG 4, the license could have required that no
modifications be made to the source file at all:
> 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
> The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in
> modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch
> files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the
> program at build time. The license must explicitly permit
> distribution of software built from modified source code. The
> license may require derived works to carry a different name or
> version number from the original software. (This is a compromise.
> The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files,
> source or binary, from being modified.)
So, it would be DFSG compatible if the license required an unmodified
file be distributed that was patched at build time.
This is clearly a lot better than that, and appears to grant our users
the same freedoms as would be the case if DFSG 4 were needed.
So I'll toss it back to you:
which condition of the DFSG would be violated by this license?
Richard> I'm curious if there are opinions on why "must retain the
Richard> above copyright notice immediately at the beginning of the
Richard> file" is consistent with the DFSG. This is one of a variety
Richard> of 1990s FreeBSD 3-clause BSD variants with such a feature.
Well, under DFSG 4, the license could have required that no
modifications be made to the source file at all:
> 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
> The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in
> modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch
> files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the
> program at build time. The license must explicitly permit
> distribution of software built from modified source code. The
> license may require derived works to carry a different name or
> version number from the original software. (This is a compromise.
> The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files,
> source or binary, from being modified.)
So, it would be DFSG compatible if the license required an unmodified
file be distributed that was patched at build time.
This is clearly a lot better than that, and appears to grant our users
the same freedoms as would be the case if DFSG 4 were needed.
So I'll toss it back to you:
which condition of the DFSG would be violated by this license?
Richard Fontana
Sep 16, 2022, 4:30:02 PM9/16/22
to
Richard
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