[Snowball-discuss] Snowball licensing confusion

[Olly Betts]

One-line summary: Snowball is actually licensed under the 3-clause BSD licence

If you visit the old snowball website, then you'll find this page:

http://snowball.tartarus.org/license.php

Which says:

| All the software given out on this Snowball site is covered by the BSD
| License (see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html ),
| [...]

Unfortunately, the text on the linked page has changed since the link
was created.  Currently it has:

| The BSD 2-Clause License
|
|    The following is a BSD 2-Clause license template. To generate your own
|    license, change the values of OWNER and YEAR from their original values as
|    given here, and substitute your own.
|
|    Note: see also the BSD-3-Clause license.
|
|     This prelude is not part of the license.
|
| <OWNER> = Regents of the University of California
| <YEAR> = 1998
|
| In the original BSD license, both occurrences of the phrase "COPYRIGHT
| HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS" in the disclaimer read "REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS".
|
| Here is the license template:
|
| Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>
| All rights reserved.
|
| 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 COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 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 COPYRIGHT
| HOLDER 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.

However, on 2011-04-30 the wayback machine shows it as having the 3-clause
version (which seems to have been there at least as far back as 1999-10-01):
https://web.archive.org/web/20110430042140/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19991001080903/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html

| The BSD License
|
|    The following is a BSD license template. To generate your own license,
|    change the values of OWNER, ORGANIZATION and YEAR from their original
|    values as given here, and substitute your own.
|
|    Note: You may optionally omit clause 3 and still be OSD-conformant. On
|    January 9th, 2008 the OSI Board approved the "Simplified BSD License"
|    variant used by FreeBSD and others, which omits the final "no-endorsement"
|    clause and is thus roughly equivalent to the MIT License.
|
|    Historical Note: The original license used on BSD Unix had four clauses.
|    The advertising clause (the third of four clauses) required you to
|    acknowledge use of U.C. Berkeley code in your advertising of any product
|    using that code.  It was officially rescinded by the Director of the
|    Office of Technology Licensing of the University of California on July
|    22nd, 1999. He states that clause 3 is "hereby deleted in its entirety."
|    The four clause license has not been approved by OSI. The license below
|    does not contain the advertising clause.
|
|    This prelude is not part of the license.
|
| <OWNER> = Regents of the University of California
| <ORGANIZATION> = University of California, Berkeley
| <YEAR> = 1998
|
| In the original BSD license, both occurrences of the phrase "COPYRIGHT
| HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS" in the disclaimer read "REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS".
|
| Here is the license template:
|
| Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>
| All rights reserved.
|
| Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
| modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
|
|    Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
|    this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
|
|    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.
|
|    Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its contributors
|    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
|    without specific prior written permission.
|
| THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 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 COPYRIGHT HOLDER 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.

The material difference is that the original version has an extra clause:

|    Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its contributors
|    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
|    without specific prior written permission.

OSI apparently removed the 3rd clause between 2011-04-30 and 2011-06-05:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110430042140/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20110605042004/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html

The Snowball licensing page has linked to the OSI page since well before 2011,
so the intended licence seems to be the 3-clause BSD, but for the last 4 years,
people will have reasonably thought it was licensed under the 2-clause BSD
variant.

But anyone who contributed prior to mid 2011 will have done so under the
3-clause licence.  It's probably not a useful exercise to try to work out
which contributors are affected and contact them - I propose we should just
work on the basis that snowball is under the 3-clause BSD licence.  (But
if anyone is really keen to try to contact all early contributors, you're
welcome to try).

I realise the old website is meant to be frozen, but in the interests of not
misleading people downloading code from there I think it would be helpful
to replace the link to the OSI page with the text of the BSD 3-clause licence,
or at least a link to a page containing that version (but then we risk OSI
switching the licence text underneath us again).

Richard/Martin - I can supply a patch or updated web page if that helps to make
that happen.

Meanwhile I'm working on getting to the point where we can actually put the
licence in the software...

Cheers,
    Olly