open source license with 24 month proprietary clause

[Jeremy C. Reed]

On Sun, 4 May 2003, Dan Langille wrote:

> > I read a magazine article saying that the BSD license does this 24 month
> > innovations claim.
>
> For the record, the BSD license does no such thing.  (I know you know
> that...).

Yes.

> > Time for a letter to the editor ...
>
> Details of the article please...

"Users take open source databases for a spin." Network World, April 28.

The article indicated that the BSD license offers developers and companies
a "proprietary head start of 24 months for their innovations" and "a
24-month claim on whatever innovations that might create."

The online version was fixed. I wrote a letter to the editor that quickly
explained the BSD license and it was published in print about a month
later. (The published letter was edited from the version I provided.[1])

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/

[1] I sure have bad luck with this! I have had many technical print
articles sliced and diced. Sometimes, I have had sentences repeated --
"didn't I just read that?", unrelated sentences merged, and spellings
changed, like "lyx" changed to "lynx" in the context of an WYSIWYM
document processor.