Filter
Top Products
Appendix E Open Source Licences
Media Server User’s Guide
501
Boost's lawyers were well aware of patent provisions in licenses like the GPL and CPL, and would
have included such provisions in the Boost license if they were believed to be legally useful.
Why doesn't the copyright message say "All rights reserved"? Devin Smith says "I don't think it
belongs in the copyright notice for anything (software, electronic documentation, etc.) that is being
licensed. It belongs in books that are sold where, in fact, all rights (e.g., to reproduce the book,
etc.) are being reserved in the publisher or author. I think it shouldn't be in the BSD license."
Do I have to copyright/license trivial files? Even a test file that just contains an empty main()
should have a copyright. Files without copyrights make corporate lawyers nervous, and that's a
barrier to adoption. The more of Boost is uniformly copyrighted and licensed, the less problem
people will have with mounting a Boost release CD on a corporate server.
Can I use the Boost license for my own projects outside Boost? Sure; there are no restrictions on
the use of the license itself.
Is the Boost license "Open Source"? Yes. The Open Source Initiative certified the Boost Software
License 1.0 in early 2008.
TRANSITION
To ease the transition of the code base towards the new common license, several people decided to
give a blanket permission for all their contributions to use the new license. This hopefully helps
maintainers to switch to the new license once the list contains enough names without asking over
and over again for each change. Please consider adding your name to the list.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dave Abrahams led the Boost effort to develop better licensing. The legal team was led by Diane
Cabell, Director, Clinical Programs, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School.
Devin Smith, attorney, Nixon Peabody LLP, wrote the Boost License. Eva Chan, Harvard Law School,
contributed analysis of Boost issues and drafts of various legal documents. Boost members
reviewed drafts of the license. Beman Dawes wrote this web page.
Revised $Date: 2009-06-07 07:14:52 -0400 (Sun, 07 Jun 2009) $
Copyright Beman Dawes, Daniel Frey, David Abrahams, 2003-2004.
Copyright Rene Rivera 2004-2005.
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.