RE: [boost] Draft of new Boost Software License

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-06-27 13:22:43

At 09:53 AM 6/26/2003, William E. Kempf wrote:

 >Paul A. Bristow said:
 >
 >> And:
 >>
 >> //  (C) Jane Programmer, 2003
 >> //   See www.boost.org/license for license terms and conditions
 >> //   See www.boost.org/libs/janes-lib for documentation
 >>
 >> Looks fine to me, though I prefer "Copyright" to (C)

Yes, I do too. The above was meant to be an example; the lawyers will help 
with the exact wording.

 >It looks simple, but would it be legally binding?  For instance, say I
 >release my software with this Boost license today, using the above text
 >(and assuming the links point to the license, of course).  Now, a year
 >from now something is found to be problematic with the license and the
 >lawyers tweak it.  I can see a case being made that existing projects
 >could from that point on be changed to be covered by this new license, 
but
 >previous releases would seem to have to be legally bound to the license 
as
 >it existed then.  The above links, however, will not refer to this older
 >license, but to the newer license.  This seems to make the above scheme a
 >little legally shakey, no?  I thought you had to physically include the
 >license with distributions and have the individual file licenses refer to
 >this distributed license?

Yes, those are all issues.

In non-Boost code, I've seen wording something like "See the attached 
license; if it is missing see www.foo.org/license." Maybe something like 
that is what will be recommended.

 >That's obviously a question for the lawyers, as us laymen will only be
 >guessing ;).
 >
 >But it would be nice to just refer to the license instead of repeating it
 >in every single file.

They've already signed off on the concept of a single copy of the license. 
It is just the exact way to refer to it that hasn't been finalized.

--Beman