Clarifying trademarks and copyright related to licensing

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has asked us to make certain changes to the text of the Personal Public License that we are using for some parts of UBOS, in order to avoid confusion around trademarks and copyrights held by the FSF.

We have no intention to create or perpetuate such confusion, so we are happy to oblige. Here’s what we changed as part of the most recent UBOS update.

• The Personal Public License has been republished as version 3a, without the GPL preamble and without the “how to use” section that the FSF claims copyright to.

• We also have removed all references to the term GNU, and to the FSF in the license, as we do not intend to imply that the FSF is the source, has approved, or has an affiliation with the Personal Public License.

• The updated version is here.

While the document itself has changed, the substance of the Personal Public License remains the same:

• You have all the same rights and responsibilities as the FSF’s General Public License version 3 (GPLv3) gives to you, but only if you are an individual, not if you are an organization. We explained the rationale for that in a previous post here.

• If you are an organization, we are happy to license to you, too, but with different terms. Please get in touch.