[boost] Licence Proliferation (background and explanation)

From: John Maddock (jm_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-06-15 07:49:35

I've been working on an automated tool to extract and present a list of
boost licences in effect for a given boost library (or collection of files).
Although the tool is working well, it's throwing up a lot of licences that
are used by just one or two files, and which are only very subtly different
from licences in use elsewhere in boost (by different I mean that they use
different words, not just formatting, or punctuation).  My guess is that
most of these are accidental changes, and if that is the case then it would
make things a whole lot easier if they could be changed to match other
existing boost licences - from a lawyers point of view,  why should a
commercial body wanting to use Boost have to review 50 almost but not quite
identical licences, when just two or three variants would do?

Thoughts, comments?

Thanks,

John.