Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 23:49:57 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: walton@nordicrecords.com Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Berkeley removes Advertising Clause Message-ID: <199909082349.QAA03644@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19990908044028.19574.qmail@modgud.nordicrecords.com> from "Dave Walton" at Sep 7, 99 09:38:10 pm
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> On 8 Sep 99, at 0:19, Terry Lambert wrote: > > The "Claim Credit" clause, sometimes wrongly called > > the advertising caluse by people who don't understand that it does > > not invoke unless you try to claim credit for the code, > > I don't understand. I don't see anything conditional about clause 3. > How is it that it only applies when you try to claim credit? OK. Here's my pat answer for this question, using /usr/include/stdio.h as my example: * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software * must display the following acknowledgement: * This product includes software developed by the University of * California, Berkeley and its contributors. So, here are the questions you need to ask yourself: 1) Do your advertising materials say: "Uses the fantastic fileno(3) routine!" ? 2) Do your advertising materials say: "Now, with industry standard 'stdio.h'!" ? If the answer to both of these questions is "No", then the answer to the question "Do I have to print the acknowledgement in my advertising materials?" is also (a profound) "No". > > It makes it possible to license unmodified BSD4.4-Lite2 derived > > code under GPL (assuming it's not a hoax). > > Ok, now I'm completely confused. How is it possible for someone > other than the copyright holder to take unmodified copyrighted > code and release it under a different license?? Under a legal theory that has not been tested in an apellate level court (the only type of court that can create binding case law in the U.S.), it's not possible for anyone other than the copyright holder to relicense the work in its entirety. Under the same (untested) legal theory, by extension, it is not possible to change the license on a derivate work. Under the same (untested) legal theory, by extension, it is not possible to change the agregate license on an agregate derivate work. I'd be happy for you to find case law proving this theory (it was documented extensively in the slashdot discussion, by an intellectual property lawyer), but intil you do, I'm going to have to act as if it's still a theory. Whis is kind of serendipitous, what with it actually still being a legal theory, and all. 8-). The current common law in this regard allows the relicense, due to the fact that we are treating software as if it were physical property. This allows us to apply the docterine of "adverse use" in order to establish what is called a "prescrptive lien" on the "property". This means that the Berkeley DB code that SleepyCat has created a derivitive work of, and released under a different license, is legal, at this time. The same for the Berkeley Sendmail code, which Sendmail.com has taken proprietary for non-source software distributions: it's legal, _at this time_, despite the fact that it is derivative of a work whose authorship rights were never fully granted under other than the 4 clause license (unlike the UCB CSRG contributors, who assigned rights to the university). Anyway, anything other than "status quo" is hand waving until you get it to an apellate court, so good luck getting it to an apellate court. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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