Permissions, conditions and limitations at a glance
Conditions
- License and copyright noticeA copy of the license and the copyright notice must be included when distributing.
Limitations
- LiabilityExpressly states that there is no liability for damages.
- WarrantyExpressly states that no warranty is provided.
Permissions, conditions and limitations are classified using data from choosealicense.com (GitHub, MIT License).
What kind of license is it?
The BSD license originates from the BSD Unix distribution of the University of California, Berkeley. The 3-Clause version removed, in 1999, the "advertising clause" (which required advertising materials to acknowledge the University of California, Berkeley) from the original four clauses, which is why it is called "New BSD" or "Revised BSD". Go, Django, NumPy and pandas use this license.
The three conditions
- When redistributing source code, retain the copyright notice, list of conditions and disclaimer.
- When redistributing in binary form, reproduce the same in the documentation or other materials provided with the distribution.
- Do not use the names of the copyright holder or contributors to endorse or promote derived products without prior written permission.
How it differs from MIT
Its effect is very similar to MIT. The differences are the explicit clause 3 "non-endorsement" provision and slightly more specific wording about where the notice goes in binary distributions. Neither has a patent clause.
Common misconceptions
- "All BSD licenses are the same" — The 4-Clause version (with the advertising clause) is incompatible with the GPL and awkward to mix with other BSD code. New projects use 3-Clause or 2-Clause.
- "Because of the non-endorsement clause, I can't mention names in credits" — Truthfully stating the source is part of the notice obligation. What is prohibited is promotion that gives the impression the copyright holder endorses or recommends the product.
- "Using BSD code means I must publish my source" — There is no disclosure obligation.
How to apply it
Put the text in the LICENSE file and fill in [year] and [fullname]. The "copyright holder" in clause 3 is written literally as "the copyright holder" in the text, so you do not need to insert a name there. The SPDX identifier is BSD-3-Clause.
When it fits
Choose it when you want to give MIT-level freedom while preventing your organization's or university's name from being used to advertise derived products. It is especially common in the scientific computing and data analysis ecosystem (Python's SciPy family).
Can BSD-3-Clause code go into another project?
General verdicts for taking code released under this license and distributing it combined into a project under each license below. See other combinations in the compatibility checker →
| Target project | Verdict | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Proprietary (closed-source) software | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| MIT | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| Apache-2.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| MPL-2.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| LGPL-2.1 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| LGPL-3.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| GPL-2.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| GPL-3.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| AGPL-3.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
The content on this site is general information, not legal advice. For actual distribution, contracts or disputes, consult a lawyer or other qualified professional.