BSD licence

The BSD licence is named after the group that first used the licence, the University of California, Berkeley, where the BSD operating system was first made. Since they are in the United States, BSD uses the U.S. spelling BSD license.

 The licence 
The words of the BSD licence are public domain and can be changed however people want. To be useful for people or groups, people need to change 'Regents of the University of California', 'University of California, Berkeley', and 'Regents' to their name. A basic BSD licence looks like this:

 * Copyright (c) 1994, Regents of the University of California
 * 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.
 *     * Neither the name of the University of California, Berkeley nor the
 *       names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
 *       derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
 *
 * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS 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 AND 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.

This means that any person who uses the licensed software can do anything with it, but the person cannot say it is all their work or say that the first makers of the software support the person's new software in any way. It also stops people from suing the first makers if something goes wrong with it.

Related pages
 Software licence

Category:Software licences
Category:BSD