RMS says: "Use BSD, for goodness sake!"

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Terry Lambert <tlambert2 at mindspring.com> writes:

> For most of the things you mention, they are included in
> "The Programmer's Workbench" from Bell Labs, which is now
> available for free download, including ksh93, awk, troff,
> etc..
> 
> Why not use the real things, if you are going to replace the
> GNU replacements?

Maybe because AT&T's licenses are over the "onerous" threshold too.
Eg, ksh93's at http://www.research.att.com/sw/license/ast-open.html

It impresses me as the most well-written license I've seen, and it
pleases me by it's acknowledgment that the software is "proprietary"
(which is contrary to the wide misuse of the term in the open-source
world, while strictly accurate in the GNU-speak meaning of "not
GPL-compatible"), BUT it is the most protective of an open source
licensor's rights of any license I can remember and it has MANY onerous
terms which I doubt that few derivers would be willing to work under.

I'm not sure it's even worth the risks to use their software as-is,
given terms such as found in the indemnification section.

This term from the first section helps set the tone of the thing:

    You will regularly monitor the [AT&T] Website for any notices.