Home » Mailing list archives » netbsd-announce » 2008 » June » 20

The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License

Previous message: [thread] [date] [author]
Next message: [thread] [date] [author]
[view in full thread]
From: Alistair Crooks
Subject: The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License
Date: Friday, June 20, 2008 - 9:10 am

The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License
=======================================================

Following on from a vote amongst the membership of the NetBSD
Foundation, and in recognition of the changing face of software
licensing, the Foundation has changed its recommended license to be a
2 clause BSD license.  A template version of this new license is
included at the bottom of this email.  This recommended license is the
one that the Foundation strongly encourages its contributors to use
when assigning copyright to the Foundation.

At the same time, all the code which was contributed to the NetBSD
Foundation has been modified to use the new 2-clause NetBSD license.

The change in license has come about because of a number of factors:

+ we have seen organisations and people concerned about the old clause
3 (the advertising clause) in the license, to the extent where NetBSD
code could not be used in commercial products; the new license means
that these concerns are no longer valid

+ UCB moved some time ago to remove clause 3 from the code
contributed to UCB; this change mirrors that one

+ we have seen some instances where clause 3 was ignored by groups
and organisations

+ the members of the NetBSD Foundation (i.e. its developers) no
longer considered clause 4 (the "endorsement" clause) to be useful
in today's software world

Martin Husemann has gone through our trees and modified the licences,
where applicable.  The first pass of this sweep changed over 5900
files in src alone.  The src diffs were more than 5.5 MB.  The final
number of files was 7104.  We believe that all changes are correct
(they were proof-read prior to being applied), but there is always the
chance that some have been missed, particularly some which were
originally contributed to TNF with a 3 clause license, or which may
contain typos meaning that our scripts could not identify them
properly.  If you (the user community) do find any of these, please
could you let us know about them.  Our thanks to Martin for this
massive piece of work.

Third parties are encouraged to change the license on any files which
have a 4-clause license contributed to the NetBSD Foundation to a
2-clause license. We would also encourage you to inform us about these
files, so that we can continue to track the many places in which NetBSD
is used.

So the NetBSD Foundation is today asking its contributors to use
the new 2 clause NetBSD license in any software that is contributed,
since we firmly believe that it serves the NetBSD community - its
users and developers and contributers, commercial entities and
academic research - in the best manner possible.

Alistair Crooks
President
The NetBSD Foundation


/*-
 * Copyright (c) 2008 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
 * All rights reserved.
 *
 * This code is derived from software contributed to The NetBSD Foundation
 * by 
 *
 * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
 * are met:
 * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
 *    notice, 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.
 *
 * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE NETBSD FOUNDATION, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS
 * ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
 * TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
 * PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE FOUNDATION OR CONTRIBUTORS
 * BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
 * CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
 * SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
 * INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
 * CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
 * ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
 * POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
 */
Previous message: [thread] [date] [author]
Next message: [thread] [date] [author]
Messages in current thread:
[No subject], , (Wed Dec 31, 5:00 pm)
Summary of Changes to the NetBSD Packages Collection in Fe ..., Alistair Crooks, (Fri Mar 22, 1:32 pm)
upgrade openssh to 3.3, or 3.2.1 + privilege separation, itojun, (Mon Jun 24, 7:29 pm)
Anonymous CVS users please note: modules are being merged, Perry E. Metzger, (Thu Dec 19, 9:56 am)
New NetBSD/amd64 snapshot, Frank van der Linden, (Sat May 10, 11:38 am)
NetBSD logo design competition, Luke Mewburn, (Tue Jan 13, 5:46 pm)
NetBSD Security Advisory 2004-009: ftpd root escalation, NetBSD Security-Officer, (Tue Aug 17, 10:48 am)
Quarterly Status Report: July - September 2004, Jan Schaumann, (Tue Oct 5, 10:24 am)
Announcing the release of NetBSD 2.0, James Chacon, (Thu Dec 9, 1:30 pm)
NetBSD Quarterly Status Report - 2005Q1, Jan Schaumann, (Fri Apr 8, 9:45 am)
How to help NetBSD help you., Thor Lancelot Simon, (Sun Jun 12, 2:55 pm)
NetBSD Security Advisory NetBSD-SN20050708-1: NetBSD base ..., NetBSD Security-Officer, (Mon Jul 11, 9:31 am)
NetBSD and the Google "Summer of Code" Summary, Jan Schaumann, (Sun Oct 16, 10:56 am)
NetBSD Status Report: July - December 2005, Jan Schaumann, (Tue Jan 31, 8:01 am)
Announce: NetBSD gets permission to incorporate POSIX(R) m ..., Hubert Feyrer, (Wed Feb 15, 1:14 pm)
cvsweb is temporarily offline, SODA Noriyuki, (Mon Mar 27, 6:03 am)
Re: cvsweb is temporarily offline, SODA Noriyuki, (Tue Mar 28, 1:41 am)
NetBSD 4.0 release cycle, Martin Husemann, (Tue Apr 11, 11:49 am)
NetBSD Security Advisory 2006-016: IPv6 socket options can ..., NetBSD Security-Officer, (Thu Jun 8, 2:43 pm)
NetBSD Security Advisory 2006-018: sail(6), dm(8) and tetr ..., NetBSD Security-Officer, (Thu Aug 10, 1:30 pm)
(unknown), John Nemeth, (Wed May 16, 11:40 am)
The pkgsrc-2007Q2 Release, Alistair Crooks, (Sun Jul 1, 3:29 am)
NetBSD Fundraising Campaign 2007, Mindaugas Rasiukevicius, (Tue Aug 14, 12:34 pm)
mail-index.NetBSD.org has been revamped, S.P.Zeidler, (Mon Feb 11, 3:00 pm)
More interviews about packaging systems , Mark Weinem, (Thu Mar 13, 6:31 pm)
The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License, Alistair Crooks, (Fri Jun 20, 9:10 am)
NetBSD Security Advisory 2008-010: Malicious PPPoE discove ..., NetBSD Security-Officer, (Tue Aug 26, 7:12 am)
NetBSD feature end-of-life announcement: soft dependencies, Andrew Doran, (Sat Dec 13, 2:51 pm)
The pkgsrc-2008Q4 Release, Alistair Crooks, (Sun Jan 11, 11:09 pm)
NetBSD 5.0_RC3 binaries available for download, Soren Jacobsen, (Sat Mar 21, 1:49 pm)
NetBSD 5.0_RC4 binaries available for download, Soren Jacobsen, (Thu Apr 16, 12:46 pm)
NetBSD Security Advisory 2009-008: OpenSSL ASN1 parsing de ..., NetBSD Security Officer, (Tue Jul 7, 9:45 pm)
Service outage of nyftp.netbsd.org 2009-12-24 through 2010 ..., Thor Lancelot Simon, (Tue Dec 22, 10:04 pm)
NetBSD Security Advisory 2010-001: File system module auto ..., NetBSD Security Officer, (Wed Jan 13, 4:38 am)
NetBSD in GSoC 2010, S.P.Zeidler, (Fri Mar 19, 12:03 am)