The NetBSD Foundation Moves to a Two Clause BSD License

[Duncan Coutts]

As I mentioned on irc, I think it's probably best to wait for other
groups like debian-legal, OSI etc to ponder it.

I should also point out that this now looks very much like the MIT
license which is already somewhat popular amongst haskell packages on
hackage, is popular in the wider free/open software community and which
we've already proposed to add to Distribution.Version.

It makes sense for NetBSD to go from BSD3 to BSD2 given its historical
connection with the BSD license but perhaps other projects are better
off with the MIT license if they do not like the 3rd clause in the BSD3
license.

Duncan

On Fri, 2008-06-20 at 14:17 -0700, Don Stewart wrote:
> NetBSD has moved from BSD-3 to BSD-2 style licenses. 
> A similar default for the Haskell community probably also makes sense
> (removing the 'endorsement' clause, which doesn't make much sense in the
> modern software industry).
> 
> The new BSD2 license is below:
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> /*-
>  * Copyright (c) 2008 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
>  * All rights reserved.
>  *
>  * This code is derived from software contributed to The NetBSD Foundation
>  * by 
>  *
>  * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
>  * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
>  * are met:
>  *
>  * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
>  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>  *
>  * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
>  *    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
>  *
>  * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE NETBSD FOUNDATION, INC. 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 FOUNDATION 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.
>  */
> 
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