Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 18:29:51 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: shigeom@isl.rdc.toshiba.co.jp (Shigeo Matsuzawa / =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCPj5fNxsoQg==?=) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Question Message-ID: <199606190129.SAA11689@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199606180644.PAA00684@genuine.isl.rdc.toshiba.co.jp> from "Shigeo Matsuzawa / =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCPj5fNxsoQg==?=" at Jun 18, 96 03:44:30 pm
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> We are considerring to sell a commercial product that uses a
> Free-BSD in it.
> In order to develop this product, we did refer the source code.
> Each product will contain Free-BSD with our original code.
>
> Our question is, in this case, what procedures do we have to do ?
> When you give us an approriate information (e.g., contact point
> to talk), it will be very appreciated.
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
> Shigeo Matsuzawa
> Toshiba Corporation in Japan.
For more detailed information, you should contact Jordan Hubbard,
President of The FreeBSD Project, Inc.. His email addres is
jkh@freebsd.org
I suggest using the subject "COMMERCIAL USE REQUIREMENTS".
I hope the following information is enough to get you started, in
any case.
====================================================================
In general, pulling the licenses together from all software which
makes up the complete system, and identifying components based on
licensing terms, can be done in about 2 engineering days. If you
can restrict your "required component list" as much as possible,
you can cut this time dramatically.
You should probably expend the effort "up front"; unfortunately,
no one has done this so far, and then returned the results of
the study to the FreeBSD project for module tag insertion, so the
components can be searched by licensing terms. The most effective
way would be to place a "LICENSE" directory in each subdirectory
that was the root for a component so you could search components
by copyright, derivation, and terms (which could be three files
in the "LICENSE" subdirectory).
Once this has been completed, you can agregate the licenses. In
general, the BSD licenses will be of the form:
<copyright 1>
[<copyright 2>]
[ ... <copyright n>]
<derivation notice>
<licensing terms>
Your lawyers need only examine the unique licensing terms on a case
by case basis for the components you wish to include in your product,
and make a general assessment of the acceptability of the license
requirements for display of copyright, derivation clauses, or additional
clauses as the licensing terms require.
====================================================================
One of the major philosphical underpinnings of the FreeBSD project
is that the core system should be distributable in modified binary
form, by commercial entities, for profit. Because of this, GPL/LGPL
and similarly licensed components are used only where no less
commercially restricted component exists.
Here is a non-legally-binding opinion (mine) on the licensing structure
of FreeBSD; it is presented as a posit/decision/result tree:
1) FreeBSD is divided into "system critical", "commercial use",
and "GPL/LGPL/similar" components.
If your system uses only "system critical" components from
FreeBSD, you will have to obey the general UCB-style licensing
terms.
If your system uses "commercial use" components, you will also
have to obey the licensing for the component in question.
In general, these components will be under licensing equal
to or less restrictive than UCB licensing.
If your system uses "GPL/LGPL/similar" components, you will also have
to obey the corresponding licensing _for those components_.
In general, BSD's use of "GPL/LGPL/similar" components comes under
the "mere agregation" clause of those licenses.
2) Terms of the UCB-style licensing.
There are several major licenses that fall into the "UCB-style
licensing" category. The main ones are the UCB license, the
CMU license, and the X Consortium License.
The main tenets of these licenses are:
(a) You agree to hold harmless the authors of the
code for incidental and consequential damages,
including "fitness for use" and DFARS clauses.
This clause is to protect the authors from legal
actions resulting from use of the code.
(b) You agree to leave the license statement in source
code in any source distributions you make.
This clause is intended to protect the authors in
the case that you derive work from their code in
the case that you do not choose to explicitly
disclaim liability as well, they do not assume
liability.
You are *not* required to make source distributions.
(c) You agree to put the license statement in any
documentation and/or accompanying materials with
any binary distribution.
This clause is to identify derivation of the code
and to include the diclaimer of liability on the
derivation. It does not modify any terms and
conditions you may choose to _also_ place on the
code. It does _not_ grant distribution rights
to your code, or to the agregate work. You are
free to dictate terms, as long as you maintain the
liability limitation for the original authors.
(d) If you advertise mentioning features or use of the
software, you must include an acknowledgement in
the advertising.
This clause is the credit clause. If you advertise
a feature that is a feature of the code covered by
the license rather than just features of the code
you have added to the agregate, you must include
the acknodledgement.
If you advertize that you include the software,
without mentioning a specific feature, you must
include the acknoledgement.
(e) You are not allowed to imply endorsement of your
product by the copyright holder, without written
permission, or to use the name of the copyright
holder to promote the product.
This clause is the "good name" clause, where you
are not allowed to use someone else's good name
without their permission; it accords the name of
the authors effective trademark protection of their
name, and then allows some use of the "trademark".
(f) Some licenses, notably the CMU license, request that
you contribute changes back to the copyright holder.
You are _not_ required to contribute changes back,
this is just a request.
Example usage:
Company wishes to include the merged VM/buffer cache code in
a product. They wish to tout the merged cache in their
advertising as a feature of their agregate product. They
will be making a binary only distribution of the agregate
system. The requirements are:
(a) You agree to hold the authors harmless
(b) N/A: no source distribution is planned
(c)(1) You must include the copyright statement in your
documentation and/or accomanying materials (like
a README or COPYRIGHT or NOTICE file):
Copyright (c) 1990 University of Utah.
Copyright (c) 1991 The Regents of the University
of California. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1993, 1994 John S. Dyson
Copyright (c) 1995, David Greenman
This code is derived from software contributed to
Berkeley by the Systems Programming Group of the
University of Utah Computer Science Department.
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
[ ... ]
(c)(2) You can preface this with a statement noting agregation
or modification, and your licensing terms. For
instance:
PORTIONS OF THIS PRODUCT ARE DERIVED FROM SOURCE
CODE DISTRIBUTER UNDER THE FOLLOWING TERMS:
(d)(1) You can reference the merged VM/buffer cache in
your advertising of your product. If you do, you
must put the notice ("the fine print") somewhere in
the ad (a footnote, or elsewhere):
This product includes software developed by the
University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
(d)(2) You can say "Based on the BSD 4.4 Lite distribution"; if
you do, you must put the notice somewhere on the ad:
This product includes software developed by the
University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
(d)(3) You can decide not mention the features or use of the
software in the ad; if you do not, you need not put the
notice in the ad.
(e)(1) You can't say "John Dyson approves this product"
without written permission.
(e)(2) You can't say "as written by John Dyson and David
Greenman" in your ad, unless you get their written
permission.
(f) N/A: You are not required to give away any code you
have added to the code from which you derived your
product. There are good reasons, including reduced
maintenance costs and the ability to more easily utilize
new revisions of the code in new revisions of your
derivitive work, for doing so. But it is not a
requirement.
3) Terms of "commercial use" components not under UCB-style
licensing.
There are a number of system components which are distributed
under licenses which allow use of the code in commercial
products. In general, these fall into the "less restrictive
than UCB license" category. The terms of the licenses vary
from component to component, and you will need to determine
compliance on a case-by-case basis. In most of these cases,
the restrictions are in the form of "hold harmless" plus
one or more non-binding "requests" (cv: Poul-Henning Kamp's
"BeerWare" license).
4) Terms of the GPL/LGPL.
Both of these licenses are well known. It is the stated policy
of the FreeBSD project, at numerous times in the past, to avoid
GPL/LGPL encumberances on code, which would prevent commercial
use without commercially difficult encumberances.
It is recommended that the GPL/LGPL components be left out of
a derivative commercial product. Alternately, they could be
included, with their source code, on the CDROM, unmodified.
If you wish to derive works from GPL/LGPL'ed code, you should
contact the original authors is you wish to negotiate some
alternate distribution terms.
Otherwise, you must obey the GPL/LGPL _for those components_;
the use of GPL/LGPL components in FreeBSD falls under the
"mere agregation" clause of both licenses, so other components
are not affected (for example, you could have a "sanitized"
tree with no GPL/LGPL components, include the GCC/GLD developement
environment, and provide source code only for the developement
environment as part of your distribution).
Regards,
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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