Talk:BSD licenses

Untitled discussion 1
The format and content of this page is all wrong :

Format

 * Category : Name
 * Category : Usage
 * Category : History
 * Category : Protection Clause terms
 * Category : Copyright holders
 * category : BSD-related disputes
 * Category : BSD compatibility
 * Category : Opponent
 * Category : Criticism
 * Category : Common misconceptions
 * Category : Links and references
 * Category : See also
 * Category : External links
 * Category : BSD revision

1
"permissive"

The BSD protection clause dont give any permission, or rights. Its an abandonware license do as you wish as long as you dont sue me back for the use of the code.

The copyright holders of BSD dont care about there code and they are the one who have been permisive on its usage not the protection clause itself

2
"Permissive licenses"

Traitor license is more appropriate, where as BSD is supossed to promote the use and promotion of Open Source software, its ALWAYS used as a trojan horse to take control of the code released under it. Allowing derivative license switch to something else almost always closed.

3
"sometimes with important differences pertaining to license compatibility"

BSD is compatible with everything. It defends and protect no value.

4
"The licenses have few restrictions compared to other free software licenses such as the GNU GPL or even the default restrictions provided by copyright, putting it relatively closer to the public domain."

The license as no restriction of usage, you can close the code , switch the license, close your derivative. But it also as no protection of rights like the rights to modify the code, the right to see the code , the rights to learn from or study the code.

Untitled discussion 2

 * 145.254.233.213 05:02, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC) minor text revs for smoother reading... (trying to be WikiGnoming):


 * add forward ref to the first mentioning of "advertising clause" for better reading (sudden use of terms explained only later should be forward referenced)


 * "The BSD License does not prohibit the use ... A notable example of such use is ..." (Substituted such use for this because using this is inaccurate, although this advancement costs a duplication of the word use.)


 * re-spelled "BSD License Template"


 * NOTE: The meanining of, the clause deletes the third section, seems unclear to me. Could the Original author of that phrase please clarify ? (Did you mean to say, the third section of the clause is deleted or something like that? While I don't know about the intricacies of the licenses in question, it seems strange to me that a non-present clause (the third one necessarily omitted from a 2-clause vs. the 3-clause version) should be able to "do" something ("delete" a section or anything)).

Untitled discussion 3
SteveAtlanta 01:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I have just completed some fairly significant edits to the article, which I feel warrant justification on this page:
 * The article as it stood seemed to be less about "what the BSD licence *is*", and more about "why proponents of certain other licenses don't like it". Text of the old license with its 'advertising clause' was included twice in different locations within the article... while amazingly enough, the actual text of the current license as it has existed for a half-dozen years was not included at all!.  My primary aim was to balance an objective explanation of the BSD license terms with a neutral overview of contraversy in its history.  I realize what an emotional hot-button issue free software licensing can be, so please give me constructive feedback and discussion if you feel I may have gone too far in specific places to overcompensate for perceived non-NPOV writing.
 * I added a quote of the full current BSD license text to the Terms of the BSD license section. I removed the quote of the original BSD license's 'advertising clause', because I felt it to redundant considering the text of the entire original license containing that clause is already included.
 * I took bits and pieces of text about the BSD's relationship to proprietary software, and to GPL'ed software, and pulled them all together along with some original content in sections named Compatibility with proprietary software licenses and Compatibility with other free software licenses. This seemed like a more logical structure for organizing all that scattered information.
 * The advertising clause section had become a holding area for information about all variations in BSD-style licenses, both historical revisions to the official BSD as well as other people's derived variants. I thought it would be much more clean and logical to create a BSD-style licenses section discussing those variants together.
 * I thought it was redundant to give in two separate places the story about William Hoskins revoking the 'advertising clause', so I removed the version that was outside the section dealing with the subject. (Don't worry RMS, I didn't touch the edit that you personally added to take credit for that change single-handedly... NPOV aside for a moment, that was just too priceless to alter!).  :)
 * I made minor changes to correct factual errors. For instance, the previous text stated that a 2-clause BSD-style license was the "official license" for the KDE project.  The policy page linked to on the KDE site makes it clear that this license is simply one of three choices that contributors can use, and even then applies only to one particular area of the KDE project.


 * The article states certain versions of the BSD license are functionally equivalent to the MIT and ISC license. Please explain this, since clause 2 of the BSD license explicitly talk about binary distributions and the other licenses don't. 84.179.201.32 21:20, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The other licenses don't make the distinction and talk about 'the software'. There were also two versions of the MIT license I think, one that talks about 'software' and one that talks about 'software and the supporting documentation'. Oh well. If my understanding of copyright is correct, it is in fact the two-clause and three-clause versions of the BSD license that are equivalent, because there is nothing else granting special rights to use the authors name as an endorsement anyway (but I'd love to be corrected on this). squell 19:37, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

diff v public domain?
so, what is the difference between giving something in public domain vs licencing it under the BSD licence? The article only says its 'closer' to this in comparison with the GPL, but doesnt explain further. --Aryah 16:53, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Public domain software does not have a copyright holder. BSD software does. This also means that code in public domain can be taken by anyone, without notice and without giving credit and put in any software with any license. Code released under the BSD license can be also similarly manipulated but credit is due to the author (clauses 1 and 2 in any edition of the BSD license). Also the author of a BSD licensed piece of code retains the right to change his mind about the license of his piece of code, and also license it(modified or not) to other entities under different conditions. Something under public domain stays public domain forever and, not having a owner, cannot be put in another state. 80.74.176.55 (talk) 13:04, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't the GNU document, "The BSD License Problem", outdated?
No, the document was updated by the GNU project on multiple occasions after the license was changed by the University of California in 1999. Additionally, the problem persists since some software is licensed with the original BSD license, including NetBSD.
 * NetBSD switched to a two-clause BSD license (not unlike what FreeBSD uses, but I don't think NetBSD has the additional disclaimer at the bottom of the license), but I'd imagine that like most free and open-source operating systems, there's code the project doesn't hold the copyright for and thus couldn't change the license of, so there's probably still code under the original BSD license out there (especially since it doesn't have an option to use a newer version of the license like the GPL, PHP License, etc.). --Evice (talk) 16:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Free Software Foundation about BSD licenses naming
''And if you want to release a program as non-copylefted free software, please don't use the advertising clause. Instead of copying the BSD license from some released package--which might still have the old version of the license in it--please copy the license from X11.''

''You can also help spread awareness of the issue by not using the term "BSD-style", and not saying "the BSD license" which implies there is only one. You see, when people refer to all non-copyleft free software licenses as "BSD-style licenses", some new free software developer who wants to use a non-copyleft free software license might take for granted that the place to get it is from BSD. He or she might copy the license with the advertising clause, not by specific intention, just by chance.''

''If you would like to cite one specific example of a non-copyleft license, and you have no particular preference, please pick an example which has no particular problem. For instance, if you talk about "X11-style licenses", you will encourage people to copy the license from X11, which avoids the advertising clause for certain, rather than take a risk by randomly chosing one of the two BSD licenses.''

When you want to refer specifically to one of the BSD licenses, please always state which one: the "original BSD license" or the "revised BSD license".

I think, X11 should be mentioned in this article, and FSF's point of view and license naming policy should be reflected here as well.


 * I think too. I came here after a search on forums software on wp (like phpBB, punBB, etc...). I get the page Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software. Some softwares are indicated to have a BSD license but it's very hard to know at the first look if that's the revised BSD license or the old with the advertising clause. At least, it should be possible to include enough information such as "X11-style (revised BSD license)" or something else to avoid confusion for users. Regards. 193.253.141.80 14:08, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

FreeBSD additions to 2-clause version?
FreeBSD also uses a 2-clause license with an additional statement at the end that the views of contributors are not the official views of the FreeBSD Project.

Does this sentence have any grounding in fact at all? The sample license in the FreeBSD source tree appears to contain no text along these lines: Sample BSD license in FreeBSD source tree. This license file has not been changed in six years.
 * Yes, it does: http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html --Mike 18:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Terms belong here, not on wikisource
I removed the "move to wikisource" tag on the actual license text. Reproducing the (short) text here is, IMHO, as appropriate as having a picture of a person in an article about that person. It should stay. --Alvestrand 18:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. None of the versions of the BSD licenses are very long, so they don't make the page much longer (as opposed to longer licenses such as the GPL or Apache License). --Evice (talk) 16:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

New BSD License?
The OSI website and this article both reference the New BSD license, but they don't mention what's new about it. What's the difference? MrZaius talk  07:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It lacks the advertising clause of the original BSD license (clause 3 in the text given on the main page). The Free Software Foundation refers to it as the modified BSD license for the same reason. Both organizations are just distinguishing it from the original version. --Evice (talk) 16:46, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft Permissive License?
Microsoft's Permissive License looks like it should qualify for the BSD-style license list;  any objections? --Piet Delport 11:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think it does &mdash; the patent-infringement clause, while possibly a Good Thing, is distinctly different from all the BSD and MIT styles of licenses. RossPatterson 21:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * How so? It seems to me that the clause is strictly orthogonal:  it only limits the patent grant, which usual BSD-style licenses don't even provide to begin with.
 * (In other words, the MPL could be characterized as strictly BSD-style, plus the grant of a blanket royalty-free patent license (conditional on not suing the licensor for patent infringement). --Piet Delport 14:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If you spend much time dealing with lawyers and software, it becomes clear pretty quickly. The "If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically." text changes the use of the code into something that requires a significant legal review.  Organizations that have large arrays of patents tend to be really careful about anything involving limits on litigation.  One of the key aspects of the BSD and X11 licenses has always been their extreme permissiveness.  Whether you think that's a Good Thing or a Bad Thing is a different matter, but it is a major characteristic of them. RossPatterson 15:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That's my whole point: this license is more generous than the BSD/X11 licenses, and even if you litigate everyone, it merely reverts back to the same level of permissiveness as the BSD/X11 licenses.
 * In other words, it does not limit litigation any more than the BSD/X11 licenses do; it just says that if you choose to litigate, you lose the royalty-free patent license (and thus, have to start paying royalties just as you would be required to do anyway with other BSD/X11 licenses).  --Piet Delport 11:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I understand your point, but I think you're wrong. The clause I cited is a penalty, and that makes the MPL dramatically different from the BSD and X11 licenses. It doesn't matter that the licensee actually receives more rights under the MPL, or how much the fallback position resembles the others. RossPatterson 14:09, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Please explain where you think i'm wrong. The clause is not a "penalty":  it's a conditional grant, just like the BSD/X11 licenses are conditional grants.  And of course it matters how much the license resembles other BSD-style licenses:  that's the point of a "BSD-style licenses" list!  --Piet Delport 17:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If you can't see the penalty in the phrase "your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically", then I understand why you confuse these licenses. And if you can't see that there is a significant difference between a pair of licenses that grant nearly unrestricted rights without penalty and one that grants the same and more (patent licenses) with a no-counter-infringement clause, we're never going to get past this "You're wrong.  No, you're wrong!" back and forth.  There's nothing wrong with the Microsoft Permissive License &mdash; it might even be a better license &mdash;  but it simply isn't a BSD or X11 equivalent.  RossPatterson 20:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Right, and the BSD software license has exactly the same penalty if you don't meet its conditions.
 * The presence or absence of a penalty is not interesting: What matters are the conditions, and what the penalty itself applies to.  In this case, as i previously mentioned, both are entirely orthogonal to the software license.  That is to say, as far as software licensing is concerned, the MPL simply is exactly equivalent to the BSD/X11 licenses (more so than the advertising-clause-containing versions, if anything), no matter what you do.
 * If the patent clause did affect the software license in any way, i would have fully agreed with you, of course. --Piet Delport 21:37, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, i've added the entry. --Piet Delport 05:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

RossPatterson: could you explain the addition of "revokable"? The license does not allow contributors to revoke their grant. --Piet Delport 00:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure. Once again, it's the text "your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically" from the license.  If you don't think that's a revocation, let's find the right term for it. RossPatterson 03:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * "Conditional grant" should be the right term: revocation implies that the grantor can revoke it, which is not the case.  --Piet Delport 13:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This discussion is all original research. If it is to go in the list, a cite saying it is based on or may be interpreted as the BSD license/permissive license should be found. What do Microsoft and the FSF officially say about? NicM 09:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC).
 * I've added a cite and used a quote from it. NicM 10:02, 19 May 2007 (UTC).


 * OK, now that's a significant difference from the BSD and X licenses, quite apart from all the foregoing discussion.  Oddly enough, that puts it firmly in the GPL camp!  Thanks for highlighting it. RossPatterson 16:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * How so? It has absolutely none of the GPL's copyleft features, and the retention clause is no different than the BSD license's own "Redistributions of source code must retain ... this list of conditions ...".  --Piet Delport 13:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Never mind. It's clear you and I are at loggerheads here. I surrender.  RossPatterson 15:17, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey, Wikipedia is not a fight or a competition. :)
 * All i'm saying is that the objections raised so far would disqualify the BSD licenses themselves from being BSD licenses. --Piet Delport 04:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

What about taking out the "except that it prohibits re-licensing if the code is distributed in source code form"? No BSD-like license (not even MIT with its explicit sublicense clause) allows re-licensing the original work under a different license than intended by the author. Otherwise what's the point of having a license that protecs your copyright notice (among other things) if anybody can just change the license and remove the notice? It seems to me that MS-PL is no different than BSD in this respect. On the other hand, the patent grant and penalty clauses seem very worthy of mention. We can quote them verbatim (without commentary) until an authoritative reference can be found. --Etatoby 09:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, the BSD license does permit re-licensing under a different license. In fact, the 4.2BSD TCP/IP stack was distributed under literally dozens of different licenses by folks who got it from Berkeley.  As this article notes, "Works based on the material may even be released under a proprietary license (but still must maintain the license requirements)." RossPatterson 01:27, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I was hoping this Wikipedia article could clarify precisely this issue. As I read the BSD license, a right to distribute binaries under any license is granted, and redistribution of source code is not required. However, IF the source is distributed, then the full BSD license MUST be reproduced in the source code. Isn't this effectively the same as requiring the source code (possibly modified) to be redistributed under the BSD license?--Lasse Hillerøe Petersen 16:38, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


 * In general, Wikipedia is a bad place to get legal advice :-) That said, read the BSD license text carefully.  Then ask yourself, "If I received a program with this text attached to it, changed it, and sold it to someone for $100 with the additional requirement that they pay me $10 every time they sell or give it to someone else, would that be allowed?".  If you answer "Yes," then ask yourself if the code is still "under the BSD license", or if you have changed the rules significantly.  RossPatterson 20:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

BSD code in Microsoft products
The article claims the "use of BSD networking code in Microsoft products" but where are the corresponding documents? The following discussion disproves this claim: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa/2004-February/065783.html So let us get the documents or delete this claim! Ento (talk) 22:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The winsock.h file contains text that disagrees with the random mailing-list comment which you found:

/* WINSOCK.H--definitions to be used with the WINSOCK.DLL * Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. *   * This header file corresponds to version 1.1 of the Windows Sockets specifica> *   * This file includes parts which are Copyright (c) 1982-1986 Regents * of the University of California. All rights reserved. The * Berkeley Software License Agreement specifies the terms and * conditions for redistribution. *   */ So it's not as simple as that Tedickey (talk) 22:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Due to a lack of sources to establish independent notability for William Hoskins, I propose that the entirety of the article (one sentence) be merge into its own section in this article. I can find no non-trivial sources that would help expand the Hoskins article; all of them seem to relate directly to this and are not substantial enough for a full and neutral biography on this individual. The article passed VFD (the old school version of AFD) on the basis that it would grow and be expanded - that was three and a half years ago, and nothing has happened since. If there is consensus to do so, or if no one comments within a week, I will undertake the merge myself. Cheers, CP 21:36, 12 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see any relevant hits with google (unless someone knows of some other detail where he might be notable, there's nothing to use) Tedickey (talk) 21:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Date of BSD license
The given source presumably for the date of BSD license points out that the wording as given in this topic appeared around 1990, and does not provide any details for earlier versions. It might have been at an earlier date, however no reliable source has been given for that. Tedickey (talk) 11:00, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it mentions the change in wording in 1990 but it also provides a snippet from the license, dated 1983:
 * In the past I've been guilty of making this claim too, based on my own experience working on the UNIX System V code base. Specifically, I worked on a version of syslogd which did not have a Berkeley copyright on it, although clearly it had, at some time, been imported from BSD. But what license is there to remove? syslogd was introduced in 4.3BSD. The file /usr/src/etc/syslogd.c starts with:
 * * Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California.
 * * All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
 * * specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
 * RossPatterson (talk) 11:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * RossPatterson (talk) 11:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * RossPatterson (talk) 11:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The 4.4 license is what's quoted - from 1990. I'd examined this before, found that it did not support the WP topic for dates before 1990, and have not found a reliable source for text before that point. I suggest that you amend the topic to match the source. Tedickey (talk) 13:16, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure - but read the rest of the discussion, which explicitly states that "That's a very different BSD license from the one to which we're accustomed. To make it more complicated, the referenced Berkeley software License Agreement does not appear to be stored in the source tree."


 * By the way, your changelog comment asserted that the 1988 date for MIT license is unreferenced. It's trivial to find it used in source code with that date (from the X11R4 and earlier sources), just as finding the BSD4.4 and earlier sources is relatively easy.  What's not well-sourced is the exact date that the existing MIT license was used (day/month/etc). Tedickey (talk) 13:26, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Given the above, I am changing the date o publishing to 1989, the year Net/1 was released. --Pot (talk) 09:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've changed it to 1990, the year 4.3BSD-Reno was released. A quick grep of the TUHS archive reveals that Net/1 actually used a different license.  ~ 10nitro (talk) 02:36, 3 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that the license text you added is incomplete. It ends in the middle of a sentence with: "IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED" ... the implied what? :) -- intgr [talk] 13:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * So sorry, then I let it go so long without fixing it. I feel awful.  Anyway, fixed (I'd posted the full text to here) ~ 10nitro (talk) 22:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * McKusick writes about 1989 being the first BSD license release date (for Net/1) -- 1, 2. To those mixing license publication with code copyright: nope, these are different, you can write a code for several years, make it available under several licenses, but if you come up with another one and publish it, that year will be the license publication year and not any previous years referred to in the code's copyright years. DISCLAIMER: "BSD license" is not court proven and I am not even sure it's an enforceable license, actually. So treat this as a commonly referred name rather then strictly. --Gvy (talk) 21:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The first link doesn't actually support your statement. The second is another person's comments about the code.  A reliable source would point to the actual code so that other editors don't have to make interpretations TEDickey (talk) 22:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Compatible with Apache License 2.0?
The article doesn't say, and I haven't found information on this online. Is the FreeBSD license compatible with the Apache License 2.0? I'm assuming it is. A related question: What would be a good license that is compatible with both Apache and the LGPL? Joseph449008 (talk) 17:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, for example you can take BSD code, modify it and release it under Apache 2.0, or the GPL, while leaving the copyright notices in place. --Pot (talk) 13:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Broken links
The citation links to the FSF info about various licenses in this article are borken. They should point to anchors on this page: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html, such as http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#FreeBSD and so on. 21:43, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I fixed this a while ago, but figured it should be noted here. ~ 10nitro (talk) 22:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup tag -- wikimarkup
Way back in October 2010, an IP added the tag to this article, and provided a reason in the edit summery, but not the article itself. I have added this. The issue is that the infoboxes overlap with the license text when the window is too narrow, and always overlap with the &lt;pre&gt; boxes. I am the editor that is originally responsible for that. I agree that this is a problem, but do not know the proper solution. I decided that 1000px wasn't too sharp of a requirement, which is what is needed for most of the licenses. For the 2-clause license, I added which bumps the license text down. This increases the whitespace too much for the others. ~ 10nitro (talk) 21:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I fixed it using the tag. ~ 10nitro (talk) 21:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Dubious POV claims
I'm commenting out the claim here.

That statement is highly POV and dubious:


 * Cf. USL v. BSDi.


 * USL v. BSDi was settled out of court 1993 after the judge expressed doubt as to the validity of USL's intellectual property.


 * There were disputed files. The actual copyright status of those files was never determined in court, because "AT&T"(USL) chose to settle as they had themselves been distributing UC Berkeley files and had significant exposure to counterclaims. It was never determined whether those files which UC Berkeley et. al. stopped distributing as part of the (previously) secret settlement were actually infringing on any USL rights at all. USL claimed they were. The view that actual AT&T licenses applied is just a partisan POV. The opposing partisan POV is that UC Berkeley's claims were a lot stronger and that a settlement was reached on terms that were very favourable to the university's interests but allowed USL/AT&T to save face and avoid exposure to UC Berkeley's strong counterclaims. Neither of these POV statements probably should be in this particular article.

31.16.123.164 (talk) 11:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The topic could be improved by providing a suitable tie-in to the discussion of the court case, and how it relates to the license. TEDickey (talk) 12:02, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Good find 31.16.123.164. As for working the court case into the article, I am not sure how relevant this copyright lawsuit is to a article about the BSD license. That said, The Proprietary software licenses compatibility section do need a rewrite. Its unsourced, gives a very incomplete view of how the BSD license compatibility is, and the title should most likely be changed to license compatibility so it can cover other licenses than proprietary ones.Belorn (talk) 14:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

FreeBSD License
The disclaimer does not appear in the source, [ see online ], but only on the website. My feeling is that source code must prevail. genium   ⟨✉⟩   17:17, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

1-clause BSD license
Since a while (at least since 2002), there is a 1-clause BSD license:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following condition is met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this condition and the following disclaimer. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR 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 AUTHOR 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.

This license is e.g. in use by the patch (Unix) program and it seems to be worth to mention it in this article. Schily (talk) 13:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Per WP:V, first you should find some reliable sources that cover this license. OSI for example does not recognize such a license. There are also multiple implementations of "patch", and GNU patch (probably the most common one) is licensed under GPL instead. -- intgr [talk] 13:54, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you like to tell me that the patch source is not a reliable source? OpenBSD FreeBSD  and the Schily patch in the schily tools at  all use the 1-clause BSD license, so the majority of the various patch forks use this license ...and OSI only mentions licenses that have been send to them for approval. BTW: Larry wall seems to be more happy with something other then the GPL and whether gpatch may be on many installations is not relevant for the fact that the 1-clause license is in use with patch. Also note that gpatch ignores POSIX rules even with --posix, so gpatch cannot be used for a POSIX certified platform. Schily (talk) 14:13, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * You might remind the reader that you are promoting this combination of conflict of interest and self-published source TEDickey (talk) 00:59, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You need to learn to use terms correctly... I have no connection to OpenBSD as you try to claim. Schily (talk) 12:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Take it easy, there's no need to lash out at people if they aren't familiar with WP guidelines, remember WP:AGF. The WP:COI that you linked explicitly encourages people with COI to discuss changes on talk pages, so even if it applies, Schily has been acting appropriately.
 * Anyway, being used in 3 utility programs does not necessarily make this license noteworthy and version control links are not the kind of sources we're looking for, see WP:RS and WP:PSTS. I could create some software myself and publish it under my own license called "1337-clause BSD license", but there needs to be an independent reliable source establishing the link between the 1337-clause license and other BSD licenses, and discussing it in sufficient length to cover it in the article while satisfying WP:V. -- intgr [talk] 14:06, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * If like to talk about notability, look at this:      ...there are more than 2000 hits for the search. I thought that Larry Wall gives a nice example for a non-unimportant code author. Let me explain it in a different way: not doing research does not verify missing notability. Mr. Dickey is well known for frequently ignoring and miss-interpreting reliable sources and for doing biased research. I hope you don't like to follow him.  Schily (talk) 14:36, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not "following [TEDickey]", I am applying the same standards that I follow myself and I apply to all edits I review. If you want something added to the article then you have to provide the sources to justify it &mdash; not challenge other people to prove you wrong, see WP:BURDEN. We want sources that actually talk about the license, so there is something that can be written about it in the article based on the source &mdash; not simply copies of the license or software projects using the license. WP:RS, WP:V and WP:OR can tell you all this, but I understand that the guidelines/policies aren't easy to digest and require practice and experience to apply. Note that the current sourcing in this article is pretty bad, and not an example to learn from.
 * Everyone is "biased" and their bias may not match yours, but to make progress, you need to cooperate with them anyway. Name-calling can only serve to damage that cooperation. If you can't stay civil in your exchanges, maybe you should avoid participating in these subjects (and this really goes to the both of you). -- intgr [talk] 17:37, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The problem in this case is that Mr. Dickey repeatedly attacks other people and tries to steal their time with useless discussions, usually based on miss-interpreted sources. I replied this way, because it seemed that you intend to support him and this is something I cannot endorse. I have no problem with a fact based discussion, but it should be aligned with the general quality of Wikipedia. In other words: if an article mentions one thing and is not well sourced, it does not seem to be correct to have a higher quality goal for new additions.


 * I believe that it is worth to mention the 1-clause license in this article but I am open to arguments why this should not be done. Do you have such arguments? If you believe that WP should only include articles for topics that are talked about already, we may need to remove half of WP. Schily (talk) 09:19, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * And you repeatedly attack TEDickey even when you're not replying to him/her. Pot, kettle.
 * > "if an article mentions one thing and is not well sourced, it does not seem to be correct to have a higher quality goal for new additions"
 * That's an argument similar to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. It would prevent Wikipedia from improving the quality standards. To the contrary, it's common that edits made a long time ago were scrutinised much less than current ones are. It may seem unfair, but it's a push for higher quality.
 * Anyway, the standard is set by WP:V: "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation". 3-clause and 2-clause BSD licenses are not controversial, but I challenged the 1-clause version on the basis that it's not by far as common, and even OSI doesn't acknowledge it. -- intgr [talk] 12:35, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You seem to have problems to distinct defence against someone who is stalking you and being a stalker yourself. I am not a stalker but I am attacked by several stalkers in WP and the person mentioned before is one of them. You can easily verify this by following the time lines of discussions...


 * If you like to improve the quality of Wikipedia, it makes sense to start with existing content before adding new content.


 * Last, if I understand you correctly you seem to propose a way that would prevent WP from being able to evolve. Let me give you an example: In former times, the English WP claimed that someone else invented the programmable computer even though everybody in Germany knows that this was Konrad Zuse. Even though it is a repeated mistake of the English WP to claim US inventors for something that has been invented elsewhere before, an easy way of correcting is to mention a reliable source for something that predates the false claim. In recent times, there however have been numerous attempts to prevent adding well sourced information for something where of course nobody may know whether this really names the first occurrence. But it names the currently oldest documented instance.


 * I understand that notability is important but there is a lot non-notable stuff in WP and the fact that nobody asked for approving the 1-clause BSD license at OSI does not make it non-existent. Schily (talk) 12:59, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

This isn't the time and place to be arguing philosophy about how changes need to be made in Wikipedia guidelines. I was just giving you some background about why things are the way they are, but that has distracted you from my actual point. Wikipedia policies and guidelines are the way they are; by participating in Wikipedia, you're expected to abide by them.

Nobody claims that the license is "non-existent". The real issue is that WP:V requires reliable sources to add this content to the article. -- intgr [talk] 15:11, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Trial for a better understanding of BSD licence
Hi everybody, I try to upgrade the hungarian BSD licenses article. To do this I need a very good understanding of every part of the BSD licence text, however as I am neither a native english, nor a lawyer, I got some difficulties. I hope you can help me.

First thing that I don't understand is the as is from the following text: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY  AS IS Can someone explain what is the meaning of as is in this sentence?

The second thing, wihtin I'm not sure is understanding the copyright holder notion. Who is the copyright holder when I create a program and someone modify my software. I mean who is the copyright holder of the second software. Still me, who firstly created it, or the second programmer who upgraded it with own effort? - fektom — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fektom (talk • contribs) 18:51, 28 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure that it constitutes a combined work created (with permission) from material copyrighted by both parties. -- thomas.hori (talk) 15:04, 25 November 2015 (UTC)


 * As is is a legal term meaning you take whatever you're getting in whatever condition it happens to be in, as it is, with no warranty to fix anything. There's a Wikipedia article on it: As is. TJRC (talk) 20:45, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Add a section for Facebook's custom BSD license?
I work at a company where we use lots of open source software, but our legal people have to approve it first. We recently asked to use Facebook's osquery library, which has a kind of BSD license, but it was rejected with a warning that we must not use any Facebook software with this license. It's tricky because at first glance, it's a standard BSD 3-clause with a little text file called "PATENTS" that seems to be a patent grant. Patent grants are common, for example the Apache license has a "Grant of Patent License" paragraph that basically says they won't sue you if you don't sue them. But after studying the fine print our lawyers concluded that Facebook's terms have a very different legal effect, essentially giving them a one-sided ability to revoke the license for all sorts of trivial reasons unrelated to osquery or its patents. This is because of broad words like "other action" and "any party relating to the software". To be clear our lawyers had no problem approving other software that has the BSD license without this file, and they are fine with the Apache license.

You can find the full text of Facebook's PATENTS file here: https://github.com/facebook/osquery/blob/master/PATENTS

I looked around on the web for other analysis, but all the opinions I found are from people who are not lawyers. I did find a forum comment saying "I work at Google, where many are sad to not be able to use recent Facebook code" which suggests that Google's lawyers came to the same conclusion. In forum discussions people consistently assume that this PATENTS file is a typical patent grant, which makes me wonder whether Facebook intentionally crafted it to be misleading. (?)

Facebook is a major industry player that has applied this PATENTS file to numerous open source libraries, e.g. see here for many examples. Should we add a section to the BSD Licenses article to distinguish the conventional BSD variants from Facebook's weird modification? It seems significant enough to call out. Inputjunkie (talk) 07:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for researching this, but Wikipedia's Verifiability policy requires reliable sources. Wikipedia shouldn't cover it until better sources appear; forums/comment threads do not qualify. -- intgr [talk] 08:12, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

3-clause license seems incorrect
The text here on Wikipedia for the 3-clause license (and maybe others) does not match the text at OSI. The OSI version doesn't not use the place holder for " " or "" Can't seem to find an "official" copy of the BSD licenses. Anybody know what's going on here? Jason Quinn (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Facebook BSD+Patents
A recent edit equates Facebook's BSD+Patents license (for which no WP:RS is given) with 3-clause BSD. Without a suitable WP:RS, the entire comment should be removed, because it is misleading TEDickey (talk) 10:43, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I misunderstood the point about the patents.
 * However, it would be nice to have explanation of MIT license compatibility with 3-clause BSD. Otherwise, it's not entirely clear why Facebook switched from 3-clause BSD to MIT. --Amakuha (talk) 12:08, 15 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The source given in the Facebook topic doesn't say 3-clause (only mentions BSD), so it appears to have been constructed by a Wikipedia editor. The patent aspect might be the actual issue, which makes it irrelevant for this topic. Regarding MIT vs BSD, again, there should be some suitable reliable source TEDickey (talk) 12:22, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

WP:RSN Discussion of a source cited in this article
is here FYI. -- Yae4 (talk) 18:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

BSD Zero Clause License: 2013
In the section Zero-Clause BSD license I was not able to find the source about the publication date "2013". Is anybody able to confirm that? Bozz (talk) 20:26, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move

 * BSD licenses → BSD license

Per WP:SINGULAR and WP:PLURAL, the title should be in singular form since this article refers to the concept of a BSD license, not a list of such BSD licenses. Aitraintheeditorandgamer (talk) 11:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)