[netcdfgroup] NetCDF adoption of BSD 3-clause license

• To: NetCDF Group List <netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [netcdfgroup] NetCDF adoption of BSD 3-clause license
• From: Ward Fisher <wfisher@xxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2018 14:06:09 -0700

Hello all,

Starting with the next release, the netCDF team intends to migrate away from 
the historic 'home-brewed' copyright that was written at Unidata, in favor of 
the BSD 3-clause license (viewable here: 
https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause).  This change does not result in 
any new restrictions; it is merely the adoption of a standard, well-known and 
well-understood license in place of the historic NetCDF license. This is part 
of a broader push at Unidata to adopt modern, standardized open-source 
licensing amongst our various projects.

Because licensing changes can potentially signal a big change in how software 
might be used, I *really* want to emphasize that this change is simply to 
standardize on a well-understood license, and is not meant to introduce any new 
limitations on how you can use netCDF. You can follow the link above to review 
the brief license, but in short: "You may use this software for whatever you 
like, as long as you maintain this copyright notice".  It does not introduce 
any sort of restrictions for commercial software, nor does it propagate itself 
in the fashion of the GPLv3.

I wanted to get this announcement out so that we can answer any questions which 
folks might have well in advance of it taking effect; if it provokes a broader 
discussion of licensing terms, or if there are concerns I hadn't considered, 
we'd love to hear about that too.

Have a great day all,

-Ward
Ward Fisher
wfisher@xxxxxxxx
UCAR/Unidata - Software Engineer
NetCDF team lead