Help on relicensing derived code

[Carlos A. M. dos Santos]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 4:20 PM, Henrique Almeida<hdante at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I need to write an "errno.h" with constant values used by the FreeBSD
> kernel. My project uses exclusively the 2 clause BSD license. I
> expected to copy those values from FreeBSD errno.h. However, FreeBSD
> errno.h has 3 clauses.[...]

Do you have any particular reason to refuse the current 3-clause license?

>[...] I'm a total newbie in licensing procedures so,
> it's not clear what to do.
>
>  - Relicense the code as a 2 license BSD, because it's a derived work
> (prefered choice)

You can't do that. The copyright owners are The Regents of the
University of California and UNIX System Laboratories (now Novell).
Changing the license without their permission would be legally
considered theft.

>  - If the above is not allowed, ask the original authors of errno.h to
> provide an alternative 2 clause BSD license.

You must ask the copyright owners, UC and Novell. I don't believe you
will have success any time soon, however.

>  Which choice is legally correct ?

The second one, but I strongly advise you to adopt the file as is. The
license is already fairly liberal.

-- 
My preferred quotation of Robert Louis Stevenson is "You cannot
make an omelette without breaking eggs". Not because I like the
omelettes, but because I like the sound of eggs being broken.