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@theorytoe I'd just like to interject for a moment.
MIT has released many licenses, some barely free, some free, some proprietary.
There are many BSD licenses, some barely free, some free, some proprietary.
MIT expat is a free software license, it just badly oversteps by implying that copyright law applies to the usage of software and is so short it misses a bunch of things that could make the software proprietary in certain circumstances.
The same problem applies to the BSD 3-clause, 2-clause, 1-clause and 0-clause.
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@Suiseiseki @theorytoe What's your thoughts on BSD 4-clause
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@colinsmatt11 I'm becoming convinced that the overstepping of what copyright and contract law allows by BSD licenses and MIT expat would make such licenses nonfree, if complying with the license terms wasn't trivial.
The odd one out it the BSD-4 clause, which can possibly become nonfree just with standard free software development practices, as complying with the license becomes difficult or impossible if there's more than one copyright holder:
"3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the <copyright holder>."
Although it's probably the case that neither copyright nor contract law permits such agreement from being enforced - it's not good that you need to agree to a potentially nonfree term even if it's technically unenforceable.
While I'm not a supporter of traditional advertising, but it could be argued that a manual on the usage of some software counts as an "advertising material".
For a worst case scenario, lets say you want to publish a physical copy of a manual on how to use some software with say 30 pages - but there's 1000 copyright holders - clearly having to write 100 pages of: "This product includes software developed by the <copyright holder>" will make having the book printed infeasible, as not many people are going to want to pay however much a book of 130 pages costs, when the book only has 30 pages of information.
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@sallyNULL I'm sorry, making the usage of it inconvenient for "FAGMAN" is not a good reason to use such a terrible license and it's also incompatible with the GPLv{1,2,3}.
I have the suspicion that many companies are using a bunch of software under pushover licenses in their proprietary software without even complying with the basic terms - mostly because those who select cuck licenses are too spineless to enforce their licenses and I don't think BSD 4-clause makes any difference to them.
As a result, companies aren't going to hesitate to use such software in their proprietary malware while ignoring the license terms, since the worst thing that can happen is that they'll have to add some text to the licensing section and a sentence to any advertising.
If you really want to bother them, you should license AGPLv3-or-later instead.
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@Suiseiseki
@colinsmatt11
> The odd one out it the BSD-4 clause, which can possibly become nonfree just with standard free software development practices, as complying with the license becomes difficult or impossible if there's more than one copyright holder
It is not difficult nor impossible, rather very inconvenient if you're a commercial organization, the whole point of it is that FAGMAN will stay away from that software if they're looking for something to make malware of. You can also offer special licensing to organizations that you deem trust worthy or that will treat the general public with respect (for example Trisquel or Hyperbola projects) if they get in contact with you, by offering them a GPLed copy of that project.
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