3-clause vs. 4-clause BSD license for {libp,WinP}cap and {tcpd,WinD}ump

[Guy Harris <guy () alum mit edu>]

On Jun 28, 2004, at 1:21 PM, lists () thegoldenear org wrote:

> We would like to include WinPcap and WinDump on the Windows Toolbox 
> compilation of
> software but your licencing restrictions present a problem. The clause 
> we have difficulty with in
> particular is this:
>
> "all advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software 
> display the following
> acknowledgement:
> "This product includes software developed by the Politecnico di 
> Torino, and its contributors." "

Furthermore, as WinPcap is based on libpcap and WinDump is based on 
tcpdump, the licenses for libpcap and tcpdump are also involved - and 
those licenses also have the "4-clause Berkeley license", complete with 
the "must display the following acknowledgment" third clause (or, as 
the Free Software Foundation's software license page calls it, the 
"obnoxious BSD advertising clause").

The copyright notice says the software in question is copyright by the 
Regents of the University of California, and within the past few years 
they changed the license on the BSD software to remove the third 
clause.  However, I don't know if that applies to the parts of libpcap 
and tcpdump developed at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, or only to BSD 
itself.

In addition, some code in libpcap and tcpdump might have the copyright 
owned by others, but still have clause 3 in it; if so, we'd have to ask 
those contributors whether they'd be willing to remove that clause.

I don't insist that any of the code *I've* written for libpcap and 
tcpdump have clause 3 in it, but I can't speak for all the 
contributors.  I *suspect* that most, and probably all, of the 
contributors whose code is under the 4-clause license wouldn't object 
to removing clause 3, but I don't know whether it's proper (or even 
legal) to just remove that clause without asking them.

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