License compatibility of BSD-new to X11

[Hannes Hauswedell]

On 12.04.2011 10:56, Jan-Christoph Borchardt wrote:
 > Hey all,
 >
 > at the moment I mail web application developers to license their code
 > freely. Now I have a (probably easy) question regarding license
 > compatibility:
 >
 > A developer wants to release his application as MIT/X11. It uses the Dojo
 > toolkit which is licensed as modified BSD (or Academic Free License 2.1).
 >
 > Is this possible? The third clause of the modified BSD seems to 
prevent that:
 > »Neither the name of the<organization>  nor the names of its contributors
 > may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
 > without specific prior written permission.«
 >
 > Thanks in advance. :)
 >
 >

Hi there,

MIT License ~= X11 License ~= 2-Clause-BSDL ~= ISC License

It is debatable whether 2-Clause BSDL is the same as 3-Clause BSDL, 
since international conventions on copyright and many national laws 
don't allow the specified promotion anyways.

Still, I don't see your problem. Dojo's License only applies to Dojo, as 
it is not copyleft. So anything your developer does can be licensed 
under an arbitrary license, so long, as Dojo's copyright header is 
preserved for the Dojo-Code involved.
In other words, just tell your developer to not call his app "Dojo 
Powerpack X" and he'll be fine.

Of course, this is just personal advice and not legal counsel. If you 
want to be sure, consult a lawyer.

Regards,
Hannes