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0 pointstoyg7y ago0 comments

It's a bit weird, just above they say "they decided not to simply grant a license, but to transfer ownership of the code, the Eudora trademarks, the copyrights, and the Eudora domain names to the Computer History Museum".

So it's the CHM who is barring people from using the name. The relevant clause must be this: "Neither the name of Computer History Museum nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission." Is this really "BSD license", if the name is off-limits? This looks like an extra clause to me. Honest question.

EDIT: also, that clause mentions the names of contributors, not of the actual software. So they would have to argue that Eudora is barred by "contributor Eudora Inc." -- does that company even exist anymore?

0 comments

kps7y ago

Trademark ≠ copyright. My reading is: (1) CHM now owns the code, and CHM is licensing it under a BSD license. (2) CHM now owns the trademarks, and is not licensing them.

djsumdog7y ago

You can protect the name and code differently. Firefox holds certain trademarks and only binaries they compile can be distributed with their branding.

You can have Firefox branding if you compile it yourself, but you can't distribute the binaries (Gentoo has a notice about this in the build process). This is why Debian created the IceWeasel package.

The museum might want to preserve the name associated with that piece of history, so Eudora always points to that final release. If the license for the code is BSD, people can of course publish their own ports with new names.

jcranmer7y ago

> Is this really "BSD license", if the name is off-limits? This looks like an extra clause to me.

There's actually a few licenses that are called the BSD license. In modern terms, BSD refers to the 3-clause BSD.

However, the 3-clause BSD was not the original form. It was introduced because the 4th clause was generally viewed as problematic. That 4th clause is:

> 4. 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 "weird" clause is actually the 4th clause of the 4-clause BSD. It's weird because it's extremely uncommon, but it is part of a major BSD license.

kps7y ago

That clause is in the common 3-clause version. The dropped clause from 4 to 3 is the one that was originally #3,

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the <organization>.

hsivonen7y ago

The all caps part has an extra sentence, too.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointstoyg7y ago0 comments

0 comments

kps7y ago

Trademark ≠ copyright. My reading is: (1) CHM now owns the code, and CHM is licensing it under a BSD license. (2) CHM now owns the trademarks, and is not licensing them.

djsumdog7y ago

You can protect the name and code differently. Firefox holds certain trademarks and only binaries they compile can be distributed with their branding.

jcranmer7y ago

> Is this really "BSD license", if the name is off-limits? This looks like an extra clause to me.

There's actually a few licenses that are called the BSD license. In modern terms, BSD refers to the 3-clause BSD.

However, the 3-clause BSD was not the original form. It was introduced because the 4th clause was generally viewed as problematic. That 4th clause is:

> 4. 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 "weird" clause is actually the 4th clause of the 4-clause BSD. It's weird because it's extremely uncommon, but it is part of a major BSD license.

kps7y ago

That clause is in the common 3-clause version. The dropped clause from 4 to 3 is the one that was originally #3,

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the <organization>.

hsivonen7y ago

The all caps part has an extra sentence, too.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse