4 ms·

It never ceases to astound me how many minor variants on 3-clause BSD retain clause 4 (the endorsement clause), despite not carrying the historical baggage of c

It never ceases to astound me how many minor variants on 3-clause BSD retain clause 4 (the endorsement clause), despite not carrying the historical baggage of clause 3 (the advertising clause). It made sense for 4-clause BSD (and its unbulleted predecessor) as a qualifier on clause 3: although advertising materials must contain the acknowledgement, it should not be presented such that could be misconstrued as an endorsement. Even when striking clause 3, clause 4 remained inoffensive enough to not warrant making more than the minimal change. But for new work without that history, it's a total non sequitur.

JdeBP 7y ago
You have an odd definition of "new work". My copy of the first Xinu book is dated 1984, pre-dating the invention of the GNU General Public Licence by half a decade.
- naniwaduni 7y ago
  Whatever the provenance of the content, the license is almost certainly newer than 4-clause BSD, evidenced by +endorse/-advertising clauses. This has nothing whatsoever to do with GPL.
  - JdeBP 7y ago
    You were the one that brought up the provenance, by erroneously classififying Xinu as "new work without that history". Now you are trying to have your cake and eat it by trying to hand wave away the very thing that you yourself brought up. Quite clearly, something from 1984 (actually earlier) is not "new work", and has a history: a history that pre-dates by half a decade even the very invention of one of the major free software copyright licences. If you do not understand why the non-existence of the GPL at the time of first publication is relevant to the history of something being copyright licenced the way that it is, then you have a lot of computing history to learn, including all of the things that the world went through after the first publication of Xinu when it came to ideas in software copyright licencing. Xinu dates from a time when in order to run BSD one had to have an AT&T source licence.

JdeBP 7y ago

You have an odd definition of "new work". My copy of the first Xinu book is dated 1984, pre-dating the invention of the GNU General Public Licence by half a decade.

naniwaduni 7y ago
Whatever the provenance of the content, the license is almost certainly newer than 4-clause BSD, evidenced by +endorse/-advertising clauses. This has nothing whatsoever to do with GPL.
- JdeBP 7y ago
  You were the one that brought up the provenance, by erroneously classififying Xinu as "new work without that history". Now you are trying to have your cake and eat it by trying to hand wave away the very thing that you yourself brought up. Quite clearly, something from 1984 (actually earlier) is not "new work", and has a history: a history that pre-dates by half a decade even the very invention of one of the major free software copyright licences. If you do not understand why the non-existence of the GPL at the time of first publication is relevant to the history of something being copyright licenced the way that it is, then you have a lot of computing history to learn, including all of the things that the world went through after the first publication of Xinu when it came to ideas in software copyright licencing. Xinu dates from a time when in order to run BSD one had to have an AT&T source licence.