BSD 4-clause license rescinded

[emollier]

Hi,

While working on the packaging of pyspoa in Debian, we noticed the change of terms from Expat (a.k.a. MIT/X) to BSD 4-clause. Per chance could the choice of license be reconsidered to another one?

The BSD 4-clause has some practical issues that makes it problematic for contemporary use. I understood that the original authors of the license rescinded it at the end of the XXth century in favor of 3-clause and variants. The website from gnu.org has some great suggestions of other licenses to pick.

Of course if you prefer shipping your project with BSD 4-clause, that's also fine, but I thought I would mention it.

Have a nice day, :)
Étienne.

[cjw85]

The BSD 4-clause license was chosen as an alternative to our standard Oxford Nanopore Public License used in most of our projects, e.g. LICENSE, to provide more liberal use whilst requiring strong attribution beyond source code.

I suspect the Oxford Nanopore Public License would cause you more concerns as a Debian maintainer as it contains usage restriction terms.

[emollier]

Hi Chris, Chris Wright, on 2025-02-17:

The BSD 4-clause license was chosen as an alternative to our standard Oxford Nanopore Public License used in most of our projects, e.g. [LICENSE](https://github.com/epi2me-labs/wf-human-variation/blob/master/LICENSE, to provide more liberal use whilst requiring strong attribution beyond source code. I suspect the Oxford Nanopore Public License would cause you more concerns as a Debian maintainer as it contains usage restriction terms.

I understand and I agree, but given the existing practical concerns with the BSD-4-clause, I preferred to double check that that was not an oversight. Thanks for the confirmation, I think that the present issue can be closed. Have a nice day, :) Étienne.