| Author | Bruce Dodson[1] |
|---|---|
| Version | n/a |
| Publisher | Bruce Dodson |
| Published | 29 November 2002 |
| DFSG compatible | ? |
| Free software | Yes |
| OSI approved | Yes |
| GPL compatible | Yes |
| Copyleft | No |
| Linking from code with a different license | Yes |
The Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer is an open source license, approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). It is unique among the OSI's licenses because of the choices it allows in its construction; it lets the licensor pick anywhere from 0-2 warranty disclaimers, whether they want to prohibit your publicity of the software derivatives (like in the BSD License), and other spelling and grammar options. Besides this, the license can be almost functionally identical to the new 3-clause BSD License (if the option for the no-promotion clause is exercised), or the MIT License (if the option for the no-promotion clause is not exercised).
Variants of this license are in use primarily in older software, including the original BSD kernel, developed by IBM, Intel and others. Today, it is most popular to choose either the new 3-clause BSD License or the MIT License to meet the licensing needs of the developer.
This is the only OSI-certified license (excluding the public domain) that can lack a disclaimer of warranty. The Free Software Foundation has not yet recognized this license as a free software license in the general case, but has done so for certain variations, such as that used for versions of Python before 1.6b.[2][3]