5 ms·

While it's wonderful they did this, as a short rant: I hate when companies just feel the urge to add a random sentence or two to an existing license, particula

While it's wonderful they did this, as a short rant: I hate when companies just feel the urge to add a random sentence or two to an existing license, particularly in cases like these: "3. Neither the name of the copyright holder(s) nor the names of any contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. No license is granted to the trademarks of the copyright holders even if such marks are included in this software." The first sentence is BSD, they added the second sentence. The problem with this is a few-fold. Either this clause is needed for the entire world (since BSD is used for trademark'd software all the time), or it's not needed at all. It turns out, in fact, arguments over trademark inclusion due to OSS licensing has been made before, and nobody has ever won on this before[1] So other than some lawyer just "not being satisfied unless they added stuff to the license", all this does is make a gratuitously different license that A. can't be merged with other licenses (since it requires you reproduce this condition text, and this condition text is not the same anymore as the other ones) B. Isn't actually the BSD license, and was deliberately changed, so ends up worse in court since now the other side can reasonably argue that the same precedent should't apply. C. Makes analyzing compatibility with other licenses more difficult and annoying. [1] Since they are very clearly licenses about the software work, not trademarks, and you can't stop someone from saying "this uses apple's researchkit" regardless of what trademarks you have or what you write in this license, anyway.

baddox 12y ago
> Either this clause is needed for the entire world (since BSD is used for trademark'd software all the time), or it's not needed at all. I'm not sure I follow your argument. Obviously, different individuals/organizations desire different licenses for the software they produce. If that wasn't the case, one could argue that only one software license should exist. Also, as we all know, software licenses are a fairly tricky legal matter. Perhaps Apple's lawyers just decided that adding that sentence is safer.
- hobarrera 12y ago
  The problem is this has different wording, not different legal consequences.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  Whatever the motivation, this makes code released under Apple's custom BSD license incompatible with other open source licenses, so you can't use this code in other projects.
mattl 12y ago
Looks like they took it from http://opensource.org/licenses/osl-2.1.php http://opensource.org/licenses/osl-2.1.php
- mzs 12y ago
  Not really, AFL is more similar, but the language is all different in both.
oddevan 12y ago
> No license is granted to the trademarks of the copyright holders even if such marks are included in this software. This line was probably required to get some manager at Apple to sign off on this. There are few companies as protective of their trademarks--their _name_--as Apple, and they probably wanted to make sure that an accidental commit from a developer that included an Apple logo or the word 'iPhone' didn't cause irreparable damage to their trademark. Valid fear? That's debatable. But I'd rather have a company add _one line_ to an already minimal license than not open source at all out of this fear.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  "This line was probably required to get some manager at Apple to sign off on this." I agree here :) "Apple logo or the word 'iPhone' didn't cause irreparable damage to their trademark." As I said, this is a problem either no company who uses the BSD license has or all of them have it. "But I'd rather have a company add _one line_ to an already minimal license than not open source at all out of this fear." I don't agree here at all. Because this is how we ended up with the mess that caused things like open source license certification by OSI to exist in the first place. Random companies would add random one-liners to licenses, like "don't use in nuclear reactors", etc. Down this path is madness, and it starts with good intentions.
  - derefr 12y ago
    It's probably a problem all of them have. Apple is just the only company that cares enough to make a big deal about it in advance, rather than imagining that they'll just let things slide for now and argue post-facto in some later court case that the license should be read as not granting trademarks. In other words, this isn't like the nuclear reactors bit—this is something that could actually belong in the BSD license, and where when merging BSD-licensed software with Apple!BSD-licensed software, probably the Apple!BSD would keep winning, and the trait would end up at fixation, rather than "speciating" the license.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      1. I strongly disagree with the idea that they are the only ones who would consider it a large deal enough to do something if it was a real fear. It's somewhat ridiculous to believe that, say, Google or Facebook, wouldn't do the same if they thought it was a concern. 2. The part about "having to argue post-facto" would be a valid line of argument if, as i pointed out, there wasn't already plenty of precedent that shows their fear is completely and utterly unwarranted. In fact, i doubt they could even cite a single time a judge even considered this a non-crazy argument. In other words, this in fact, is exactly like the nuclear reactors bit. It doesn't actually belong in the license, because if was a real concern: A. There would be at least some case somewhere that concerneed folks. B. After 20+ years of BSD licenses, it'd already be there
hobarrera 12y ago
While pointless (since it adds no additional protection), I don't think this avoids this code from being integrating into larges BSD codebases, since this restriction would only apply to this file, and not affect the rest of the codebase (nor would that code's it's license affect this code).

baddox 12y ago

> Either this clause is needed for the entire world (since BSD is used for trademark'd software all the time), or it's not needed at all. I'm not sure I follow your argument. Obviously, different individuals/organizations desire different licenses for the software they produce. If that wasn't the case, one could argue that only one software license should exist. Also, as we all know, software licenses are a fairly tricky legal matter. Perhaps Apple's lawyers just decided that adding that sentence is safer.

hobarrera 12y ago
The problem is this has different wording, not different legal consequences.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
Whatever the motivation, this makes code released under Apple's custom BSD license incompatible with other open source licenses, so you can't use this code in other projects.

mattl 12y ago

Looks like they took it from http://opensource.org/licenses/osl-2.1.php http://opensource.org/licenses/osl-2.1.php

mzs 12y ago
Not really, AFL is more similar, but the language is all different in both.

oddevan 12y ago

> No license is granted to the trademarks of the copyright holders even if such marks are included in this software. This line was probably required to get some manager at Apple to sign off on this. There are few companies as protective of their trademarks--their _name_--as Apple, and they probably wanted to make sure that an accidental commit from a developer that included an Apple logo or the word 'iPhone' didn't cause irreparable damage to their trademark. Valid fear? That's debatable. But I'd rather have a company add _one line_ to an already minimal license than not open source at all out of this fear.

DannyBee 12y ago
"This line was probably required to get some manager at Apple to sign off on this." I agree here :) "Apple logo or the word 'iPhone' didn't cause irreparable damage to their trademark." As I said, this is a problem either no company who uses the BSD license has or all of them have it. "But I'd rather have a company add _one line_ to an already minimal license than not open source at all out of this fear." I don't agree here at all. Because this is how we ended up with the mess that caused things like open source license certification by OSI to exist in the first place. Random companies would add random one-liners to licenses, like "don't use in nuclear reactors", etc. Down this path is madness, and it starts with good intentions.
- derefr 12y ago
  It's probably a problem all of them have. Apple is just the only company that cares enough to make a big deal about it in advance, rather than imagining that they'll just let things slide for now and argue post-facto in some later court case that the license should be read as not granting trademarks. In other words, this isn't like the nuclear reactors bit—this is something that could actually belong in the BSD license, and where when merging BSD-licensed software with Apple!BSD-licensed software, probably the Apple!BSD would keep winning, and the trait would end up at fixation, rather than "speciating" the license.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    1. I strongly disagree with the idea that they are the only ones who would consider it a large deal enough to do something if it was a real fear. It's somewhat ridiculous to believe that, say, Google or Facebook, wouldn't do the same if they thought it was a concern. 2. The part about "having to argue post-facto" would be a valid line of argument if, as i pointed out, there wasn't already plenty of precedent that shows their fear is completely and utterly unwarranted. In fact, i doubt they could even cite a single time a judge even considered this a non-crazy argument. In other words, this in fact, is exactly like the nuclear reactors bit. It doesn't actually belong in the license, because if was a real concern: A. There would be at least some case somewhere that concerneed folks. B. After 20+ years of BSD licenses, it'd already be there

hobarrera 12y ago

While pointless (since it adds no additional protection), I don't think this avoids this code from being integrating into larges BSD codebases, since this restriction would only apply to this file, and not affect the rest of the codebase (nor would that code's it's license affect this code).