What is the purpose of the "non-endorsement clause" in the New BSD license?

Posted by Joey Adams on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Joey Adams
Published on 2011-01-29T06:21:46Z Indexed on 2011/01/29 7:33 UTC
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license

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mit-license

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bsd-license

Note: This question is not about the "obnoxious BSD advertising clause". The New BSD license does not contain that clause, and is compatible with the GPL.

I'm trying to pick between the New BSD license and the MIT license for my own projects. They are essentially identical, except the BSD license contains the following clause:

Neither the name of the <organization> nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

Why would anyone want to use this clause? What's wrong with gaining some notoriety if someone makes a well-known piece of software using your code? Also, wouldn't dictating what users can and cannot do with your given name fall outside the domain of intellectual property?

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