Gerard, Could you explain why you think that the phrase you quoted is restrictive? Lots of software comes with that phrase, and it certainly hasn't inhibited its wide promulgation. All it says is that you can't pass off this software as your own, which would be lying anyway. As far as I can tell (I'm not a lawyer, etc.), it's far less restrictive than, say, GPL. It seems very like the BSD license you suggest using instead. If you include the packages in a larger work, you can just say: This work includes the blah blah package, which bears the following license: "Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice is included in all copies of any software which is or includes a copy or modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting documentation for such software. " Note that the notice *doesn't* say you have to *copyright* the larger package under the terms of the notice or to the owner of the included package, it just says you have to include the notice, presumably so the recipient knows that the package is in there, who the owner of that component is, and that distributing that part is allowed. If you look at the manuals to most commercial Unices, you'll find several pages of such notices from the owners of the various packages included in the system. What's the problem? --jh--