Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Bill Paul clause to the BSD license

One of the lesser-known variants. I use "clause" here loosely; it's really in the disclaimer.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY Bill Paul AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL Bill Paul OR THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD
BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

I'm attributing this to Bill Paul based solely on the frequency count in the FreeBSD source tree, though there are others. This sample is from 7.2-RELEASE:

147 ENT SHALL Bill Paul OR THE
28 ENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR THE
10 ENT SHALL NICK HIBMA OR THE
9 ENT SHALL ICHIRO FUKUHARA OR THE
1 ENT SHALL Ivan Sharov OR THE
1 ENT SHALL David Hulton OR THE

The "THE AUTHOR OR THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD" instances are mostly in some ACL-related code, primarily by Chris Faulhaber. Hard to say which of these are cut-and-paste, and which are deliberate.

Either way, I'm using it from now on. :-)
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