next up previous contents
Next: ``MakeMan'' in Perl Up: Developing an Open Source Previous: Coding Style   Contents

Licensing

The license under which we wish to place the program is an important issue to ponder. While in general, I tend to favor the well-known GPL, in this case I decided to place the project under a BSD-license. The reasoning is very simple: the main purpose of the project is to promote the use and the creation of man pages for all applications/executables.

Should this project become a success and be widely used, it would be to the greater benefit of everybody if even developers of proprietary software could use the basis of this project to include and incorporate into their product.

Therefore, the disclaimer you see in the following Listing will be in the ``COPYING'' file of the distribution as well as in each source-file.



Copyright (c) 2001, Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org>
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
  list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
  this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
  and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  
* The names of its contributors may not be used to endorse or promote products
  derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.



Jan Schaumann 2001-08-24