I’m reading up on the 4-clause BSD license, and it’s famous for having, what FSF calls the advertising clause, which means that if you use the source code you must explicitly mention that you’re using software built by X.
The FSF hates it , and the example they give is that for NetBSD, there were 75 names that had to be accredited. But IMO recognition of peoples work is a good thing? Taking without accrediting causes all kinds of injustices, and so to me giving credit feels like the least you can do.
Kinda curious what people think about it here on this community.
I don’t think the issue is specifically the requirement to accredit, or provide attribution, which is part of many licenses. The troublesome part is that the license requires this beyond just the use/distribution of that code, and requires this attribution upon:
All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software […]
And I agree with the FSF that this is a bit obnoxious.
Just thinking about how I manage my project, if every dependency required this it would be a considerable burden to ensure all attribution is featured on each update video, blogpost, social post etc… that I make.