Subject: Re: copyright and license issues
To: mouss <usebsd@free.fr>
From: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 10/09/2004 15:18:33
On Sat, Oct 09, 2004 at 08:55:09PM +0200, mouss wrote:
> Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> >It's important to us to make sure that third parties *know* they are free
> >to use NetBSD as they want to.  The easiest way to do that is to stamp a
> >consistent copyright and license header onto every file so that they do
> >not have to worry about files that bear no copyright (or, worse, a 
> >copyright
> >but no license, or a confusing license) but that might, or might not, be
> >"trivial".
> >
> 
> Understood. Now, if the file only contains a pointer to an external file 
> that documents the license details (suc as "This file is under the BSD 
> license described in $topsrc/LICENSE and/or http://....license.txt), 
> would that be enough?

Unfortunately, possibly not.  We've been advised by competent legal
counsel in the past that it's best if the copyright declaration and
license statement are in each file.

As I said, I personally think it's far better to just put very small
files in the public domain.  Then the issue goes away completely.

Thor