Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
[The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.] THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Stuff in [] is optional. Stuff in <> needs to be replaced. On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 18:46, Terry Hancock wrote: > Admidst the storms of controversy, I'd just like to ask a (hopefully) simple > question... ;-) > > The GPL is the "clear winner" for being a maximally "standard" copyleft free > license. > > The BSD license is apparently not directly usable (mentions Berkeley > explicitly, etc), so these licenses are generally called "BSD-type". Or, > AFAIK, anyway. > > Is there a *standard* boilerplate for a "BSD-type" or say "maximally free" > non-copyleft license (if BSD doesn't cut it). The only requirement I want to > have is that credit is given correctly and that it positively asserts that I > own copyright in the work. Probably also the "no warranty" language. No > advertising clauses are needed. ;-) > > I am delivering work on a contract, and this is (to be) part of the contract > terms -- i.e. that they get the code with no strings, but it isn't theirs. > That is, they can't turn around and charge me a license fee to use or > redistribute the code I wrote! The important distinction is to prevent it > from being considered a "work for hire" in the usual sense. > > I don't want to ruffle their feathers by making them consider all the license > details -- I'd like to just say "BSD license" or some appropriate standard > that they can live with. They could, of course, sell the software to someone > else, but the usual caveats about selling free software (i.e. you can be > easily undersold) apply. That might be valuable to them if they wanted to > build significantly on it, though. > > Also it must be freely convertable to GPL, as, if I build anything on it > *after* the contract, I'll want to have copyleft on the changes. > > The package is probably going to be a collection of Debian packaging scripts > to install a large suite of scientific applications using apt/apt-get, so it > is I think on-topic, since I will most likely want to contribute the code for > use by Debian packagers (I don't think Debian will accept it directly for > policy reasons, but it shouldn't be too much of a fix-up -- basically I need > to use a weird prefix to keep my installation out of the way of the OS and > optionally-selectable, it also has to load on Red Hat and Solaris, etc.). > > If no such standard boilerplate license exists -- would it be reasonable to > propose publishing one with instructions, along the same lines as the FSF has > done with the GPL? > > Thanks, > Terry > > -- > Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) > Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -Dave Turner GPL Compliance Engineer Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalis&p=FSF
