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The format and content of this page is all wrong :
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
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.
sometimes with important differences pertaining to license compatibility
BSD is compatible with everything. It defends and protect no value.
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.
SteveAtlanta 01:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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)
Microsoft's Permissive License [1] looks like it should qualify for the BSD-style license list; any objections? -- Piet Delport 11:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, i've added the entry. -- Piet Delport 05:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
RossPatterson: could you explain the addition [2] of "revokable"? The license does not allow contributors to revoke their grant. -- Piet Delport 00:27, 19 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)
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)
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)
/* 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)
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)
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)
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.
- */
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)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.
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)
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)
Way back in October 2010, an IP added the {{ cleanup}} 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 <pre> 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 {{ clear}} which bumps the license text down. This increases the whitespace too much for the others. ~ 10nitro ( talk) 21:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm commenting out the claim here.
That statement is highly POV and dubious:
31.16.123.164 ( talk) 11:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
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)
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)
@ Schily: 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)
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 <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> 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 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)
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 "<organization>" or "<COPYRIGHT HOLDER>" 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)
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)
is here FYI. -- Yae4 ( talk) 18:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
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)
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)
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The format and content of this page is all wrong :
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
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.
sometimes with important differences pertaining to license compatibility
BSD is compatible with everything. It defends and protect no value.
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.
SteveAtlanta 01:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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)
Microsoft's Permissive License [1] looks like it should qualify for the BSD-style license list; any objections? -- Piet Delport 11:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, i've added the entry. -- Piet Delport 05:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
RossPatterson: could you explain the addition [2] of "revokable"? The license does not allow contributors to revoke their grant. -- Piet Delport 00:27, 19 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)
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)
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)
/* 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)
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)
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)
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.
- */
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)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.
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)
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)
Way back in October 2010, an IP added the {{ cleanup}} 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 <pre> 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 {{ clear}} which bumps the license text down. This increases the whitespace too much for the others. ~ 10nitro ( talk) 21:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm commenting out the claim here.
That statement is highly POV and dubious:
31.16.123.164 ( talk) 11:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
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)
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)
@ Schily: 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)
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 <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> 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 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)
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 "<organization>" or "<COPYRIGHT HOLDER>" 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)
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)
is here FYI. -- Yae4 ( talk) 18:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
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)
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)