[Numpy-discussion] Re: Legal Notice (Gerard Vermeulen (CRTBT))

[Joe Harrington]

Gerard,

Could you explain why you think that the phrase you quoted is
restrictive?  Lots of software comes with that phrase, and it
certainly hasn't inhibited its wide promulgation.  All it says is that
you can't pass off this software as your own, which would be lying
anyway.  As far as I can tell (I'm not a lawyer, etc.), it's far less
restrictive than, say, GPL.  It seems very like the BSD license you
suggest using instead.  If you include the packages in a larger work,
you can just say:

	This work includes the blah blah package, which bears the following
	license:

	"Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
	purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this entire
	notice is included in all copies of any software which is or includes
	a copy or modification of this software and in all copies of the
	supporting documentation for such software. "

Note that the notice *doesn't* say you have to *copyright* the larger
package under the terms of the notice or to the owner of the included
package, it just says you have to include the notice, presumably so
the recipient knows that the package is in there, who the owner of
that component is, and that distributing that part is allowed.  If you
look at the manuals to most commercial Unices, you'll find several
pages of such notices from the owners of the various packages included
in the system.

What's the problem?

--jh--