[benjamir]

First thing I notice: the license is horrible.

Even GNU recommends liberal licenses for snippets with less than 300 lines (and allows for commercial use anyway!): https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html " What if the work is not very long? (#WhatIfWorkIsShort)

    If a whole software package contains very little code—less than 300 lines is the benchmark we use—you may as well use a lax permissive license for it, rather than a copyleft license like the GNU GPL. (Unless, that is, the code is specially important.) We recommend the Apache License 2.0 for such cases.

"

While LOCs poorly reflect the effort made, in this case a less anal-retentive approach would have opened up a long-term contribution to societies at large. Considering that the BBC was mainly finances by quasi-public money it's a shame that it was opted for a license with an unnecessary special case (NC).

[iso1210]

> Considering that the BBC was mainly finances by quasi-public money it's a shame that it was opted for a license with an unnecessary special case (NC).

Unfortunatly this is why it has to be licensed in that way. Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution.

Also remember this was 1999, 5 years before Apache License 2.0 was approved.

[zinekeller]

> Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution.

People outside the UK: this isn't just theoretical, please look at the history of BBC Micro. That's how the corporation was structured at the time, and it should be read with this in mind. There are a lot of very fine pieces of BBC software that is stricter than that and can't be legally released to the public, for example most broadcasting software like its MPEG2 encoder aren't available because it'll disadvantage broadcast equipment manufacturers (although for the MPEG2 encoder FFMPEG's is now better). This is also not specific to the BBC: before its disbandment, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (which owned half of the transmission network in the UK, the other half was previously BBC but both were privatized and now owned by Arqiva) required to do product development and research by law but can't commercialise those research by themselves.

[unfocussed_mike]

Very true. I've mentioned in another comment the "Other <product category> are available" disclaimer, that used to be tacked onto any content mentioning The Radio Times or any of the BBC Gardening/Good Food/Sport products from BBC Enterprises or licensees.

It's now a running joke, but the disclaimer about The Radio Times really did emerge out of a market distortion legal complaint by a competitor, TV Times.

These market distortion complaints were often timed around BBC Charter renewals to give the BBC's critics in Parliament (generally on the Tory side) ammunition. But at the same time, it's also the era of the Radio One Roadshow, the BBC Micro as you say, the emergence of the VHS box set, etc., etc., and the BBC did need to be required not to distort markets accidentally as it expanded commercially (which ironically it felt encouraged to do in order to find future non-licence-fee revenue)

[zinekeller]

It's a little bit complicated but before 1991-1994 (where there are large-scale changes outside of BBC), Radio Times were exclusively for the BBC while TV Times were exclusively for the ITV companies (yes, ITV wasn't just a single company those days!), Channel 4, and S4C (technically there is a third one, Channel Times, but that's for the Channel Islands which has a very interesting ITV setup at that time).

[unfocussed_mike]

Yeah -- I remember more than a full decade of two listings magazines per week!

To break it down a little for non-British HNers (it is very confusing and messy):

The BBC does not run adverts, but it does have a carve-out from that to mention its own associated products in limited circumstances. Most significantly the listings magazine, The Radio Times.

We start out in the situation zinekeller mentions where the BBC listed BBC TV/radio channels in The Radio Times, and TV Times listed programmes from the ITA (Independent Television Association - ITV/C4/S4C/London Weekend Television etc.)

But then you get a situation where TV viewers are buying two increasingly competitive magazines each week just to get the full listings. As satellite and cable TV appears, this becomes unfair on the consumer (to the benefit of the BBC) and it has to change.

The disclaimer came in part from those publications seeking and being granted access to the listings data that the others were publishing. TV Times got access to BBC listing data, and Radio Times published the ITA channel listings.

But the BBC was and still is able to mention the Radio Times, whereas TV Times cannot advertise on the BBC. A market distortion.

I suppose there must have been calls to ask the BBC to get out of the listings magazine market (I don't remember anything specific) but ultimately the disclaimer ("Other listings magazines are available") was imposed on the BBC.

[unfocussed_mike]

I should correct myself above because the group wasn't the ITA, it was the ITCA -- the Independent Television Companies Association. Which is now UKIB:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Independent_Bro...

[adw]

The ITV network still isn’t a single company! STV (Scotland) is not owned by ITV plc.

[zinekeller]

Fair enough, but outside Scotland it really feels like ITV is just a channel rather than the original plan of federation of channels...

[samwillis]

> I've mentioned in another comment the "Other <product category> are available" disclaimer

And the tape over product logos and labels to hide them.

[benjamir]

Yeah, sadly. But good you say it explicitly and it a fair spin(?) -- I just wanted to point out the IMO damage that license does, not blame the authors/BBC.

In Germany it's the same with the "Mediathek" nonsense. Shows paid with public money can only shown for a ridiculously short time -- no freely accessible archive.